Personal
Annual Reports
A briefing provided to
Indy Quantified Self Meetup
@jasonacobb
Personal annual report
Why should big corporations have all the fun?
Blending beautiful design, data collection and analysis, gallery quality printing, personal reflection, and behavior modification in one routine.
The Masters
Nicholas Felton
Jehiah Czebotar
Michael Anthony
Felton
@feltron
- The pioneer, godfather, or patriarch
- Started all the way back in 2005
- His work is in the Museum of Modern Art
- Data collection methods all over the board:
- Calendar entries
- Reporter
- Personal mementos from his family
- Finely printed books
Above all - These are pieces of artwork on paper
Felton builds entire new ways to display data
The annual report as history.
jehiah
@jehiah
- A hacker at Bitly
- Created personal annual reports since 2008
- Started with great data tracking and static displays
- Has since branched out to have very unique experiences driven by the data
2008 showed a wealth of data
Jehiah now routinely delivers brand new UI each year to display the data.
Jehiah incorporates pictures taken each day
Here, we see a lovely way to view the year's worth of data
Here, he looks at his coffee intake (after my own heart) and uses box plots enabling us to see trends and, more to the point, stories from the data.
Michael Anthony
@mejadesign
- Art director and designer in Philadelphia
- Experience in both print and UX design
- Annual reports since 2009
- A runner
- Self described as "above average at Connect Four"
Here we see a poster design
Mini pictures to display travel along with tidbits of funny info
The same types of data displayed in an amazing new way
Truly a blend of paper and digital design
Why?
- To learn about ourselves
- To change or improve ourselves
- To have a fun data set to play with
""It is a salient feature of our age that we have access to increasing loads of data but with no attendant increase in our self-knowledge or confidence in our ability to set goals and achieve them"" Mills baker
Me
@jasonacobb
-
Location via Foursquare (a)
- Photos via Pictary (p)
- Life via Photograph Metadata (p)
- Purchases via Amazon and YNAB (p)
- Reading via Goodreads and Kindle (p)
- Weight via Withings (p)
- Beer via Untapped (a)
- Thoughts via DayOne (a)
- Music via Last.fm (p)
- Social via Slogger (p)
(a) = active collection (p) = passive collection
Common data collection
- Transportation - especially for urban folks
- Running
- Travel
- Food types
- Alcohol
- Sleep
- Words written
- Fun memories to remember
- Payment card usage
What I've learned
- Start now: Not tomorrow. Not yesterday.
- If you want it to work, don't hack it.
- Dealing with mistakes
- Ignore them
- Go the reporter app type approach
- Ignore dates and times to enable past logging
- Go all passive
- Keep a mistake or edit log
- Have a way to capture the time you saved an Octopus
Further Research
- Stephen Wolfram
- Probably the master of data collection
- http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/
- Investigate how the masters have changed their data collection focus over the years
- Github repos for the creators
- Interviews (though sparse) with the creators
- How will wearables, more sensors, and connected services change data collection - and then how will that change the visualization of the data?
Have a great report
by
Having a great life.
Personal Annual Reports
By Jason Cobb