serial consign

Last week, Kevin Kelly wrote about a web service right on point with some of the recent projects examined here on Serial Consign. Trixie Tracker is a parental database and scheduling application developed by interface designer Ben MacNeill. The service is designed for parents to track the daily rhythms of their infant(s) and over time, build up a body of data pertaining to sleep schedules, diaper changes, breast feeding, milk inventory and diet development. The goal of collecting this information is to provide analytics to make for more efficient parenting (i.e. realizing and capitalizing on the fact that junior is very susceptible to 3 PM naps). Trixie Tracker is a commercial application based off the research, tracking and visualization that MacNeill has been engaged in since the birth of his daughter Trixie four years ago.

The above image is a Sleep Probability Chart which tracks the sleeping patterns of an infant over the course of a day at a resolution of 10 minutes. From top to bottom, the diagrams track the sleep habits of a newborn, a 6 month and year old infant. MacNeill describes the logic of the visualization as follows:

The Sleep Probability chart uses a gray scale to display the probability of your child being asleep at a certain time of day for the selected dates. Areas of high contrast (black and white) mean your child is on a predictable schedule. Areas of low contrast (light, middle and dark gray) mean a less regular schedule. A uniformly gray chart would mean a completely random sleep schedule.

Armed with crystal clear visualizations, which are in turn based on months of observations, parents would most certainly have the means to "optimize" their caregiving. In Kevin Kelly's post on the matter, he identified Trixie Tracker as just one example of a growing movement called Data-Driven Parenting. Dr. Spock please step aside and make way for Mr. Tufte!

[trixie tracker / sleep telemetry chart]

I recommend poking around on the Trixie Tracker site as it is a strange and wonderful experience to see web 2.0 aesthetics applied to parenting. One of MacNeill's most interesting pre-Trixie Tracker projects was his animated feeding chart based off data culled in 2003. MacNeill also took part in a 2006 interview on parentdish in which he contextualizes his views on data and parenting.

Having connections to web development and architectural practice (I've developed sites for two architecture studios), I'm rather opinionated about the manner in which firms archive and market themselves online. In general, I think the presence of most architecture firms on the web is tremendously underwhelming and the organization of an online portfolio almost always boils down to the "timeline vs. project typology" binary. That said, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across the web site for LOHA: Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects this past weekend.

The LOHA site mimics the structure and appearance of the Periodic Table of Elements and proposes a classification system for pertinent information associated with architectural practice. As illustrated in the screen capture above, the interface for the site is essentially the project archives and entries are categorized into news, project types, firm recognition and publications—all the information you'd expect a firm to provide. What makes this site interesting is the fact that you have access to everything at once with a "viewer" for displaying related photo-content. The site champions information and access to it rather than photography and this is a welcome change considering the all-too-familiar strategy of tacking a sickly UI onto a glorified slideshow. The empty cells that currently separate clusters of nodes will allow for a fair amount of future expansion, so it looks like this site has a lifespan of several years before a redesign.

Given the idiosyncratic nature of this interface, it is accompanied by a mini-legend which explains the nomenclature used in tagging each cell. Each cell features an abbreviation of the project name, the year completed, the square footage and colour coded tags which denote project type (residential, commercial, etc.) and other information (i.e. if the project has been published or received any awards). When you scroll over the various cells you get an interesting reading of the connectivity within the work and information archived across the site - it is really quite a pleasure to explore this archive! Kudos to the sayFINN design agency for this work.

Some tangentially related links: this project immediately made me remember the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods and Catalogtree's site is another great example of an interface that champions an indexical approach and visual identity.