Exercise 4: Information Visualization

I built a program for the game, Kings of Chaos a few years ago that was a "recruiter" program (people would click on captcha images to grow in the game). I collected a lot of data about the people that used it but never made a nice stats page. The closest I got is this image, simply a chart.

Other programmers for KoC, didn't do much either like http://koc.ithildin.com/yar/stats

So I wanted to take it a step further and make something visually aesthetic yet functional at the same time. My first idea was a bar graph which would show the amount of "clicks" each player did during different time frames (past 24 hours, past week, past month etc..). Then I got to thinking about how the game was played and the competitive nature of it. I realized I should rank people and sort the bars, descending with the winner on one side. This winner could be different depending on the time frame.

Taking the competitve idea even further I thought of an alternate type of bar graph. This one would have a giant bar across the middle horizontally. This would be labeled the average. Then each player is shown in how they relate to the average. The best are above the bar, and the worst are below it. It would inspire the users to compete to make it above the average which would in turn move the bar creating a dynamic and fun game. Also players would check back w/ the charts frequently to see if they are maintaining they're lead which is a sign of success in the program! Especially considering it could increase Ad revenue! ( Now i just need ads...).

One final thought I was playing with is the idea of using the width of the players bars to show something. The data that I tracked was merely how much was clicked at which part of the day. I'm considering using total clicks as width, regardless of time frame, but I think there could be something better. Also I'm thinking about ways to use colors still.