Name: Akvil Sakhare

Guide: Prof. Venkatesh Rajamanickam

Course: Interaction

Data: https://data.gov.in/

Memento Mori : VR Data Visualization of Un-natural Deaths in India

This project explores visualising data in virtual reality by creating a data story by drawing upon visualisation and design principles in two dimension (2D) and extending them in three dimensions (3D). The design process includes exploring the government data of unnatural death, generating design ideas and iterating prototypes to come up with the final design.

The project, deployed as a VR application, is multi-platform and can run as a standalone application or in a web-browser. The evaluation takes into account task analysis, observations, feedback and suggestions for improvement measuring the impact and fine-tuning the experience.

This Interactive VR Data Visualisation of the un-natural deaths in India is an attempt to use data for more than its value in the traditional sense. Using the medium of Virtual Reality the project tries to create an experience of Memento Mori which are artistic or symbolic reminders of mortality. It has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues. By the means of data visualisation the project attempts to create such a reminder of ones mortality.

Sketches showing Ideation process to generate visualisations and Data exploration to find trends and insights from governments numbers by reading pivot tables, 2D-3D charts and graphs.

– Layout of the final design – Concept on left, Prototype on right.
– Visualisations of different bar-charts.
– Map on left has values coded as intensity of gray which is used to generate the height map in Unity.

– Storyboard showing progression of the visualisation experience.
– Trigger mechanisms to teleport from one place to another.
– Evaluation was done using HTC Vive by Think Aloud test and other contextual tasks.