ISSS608 2016 17 T1 Project Team 1 Proposal

ISSS608 2016-17 T1 Project Team 1

Proposal

Poster

Application

Report

Background

Very much from the occurance of colossal computers that filled rooms in the early 1970s to the ultrabooks super thin laptops we have nowadays, video games have existed to fill our needs for entertainment and maybe even learning. Video games have increasingly become sophisticated as newly operating software were produced and better-performing hardware were invented. Indeed, the digital information boom at the end of the 20th century engendered a series of ultrafast developments that led from the creation of multi-pixel 8-bit video games such as Pacman, to the open world non-linear games such as Grand Theft Auto, which take on several gigabytes on the computer’s hardware storage capacity.
With the sophistication and proliferation of games, people have engendered more complex and mixed reviews about them. Computer games were originally for entertainment for those very few who could afford computers only. As software became cheaper to manufacture, the word “PC” (personal computer) emerged, and families were already buying PCs and software (including video games) in numbers.
Vgchartz.com, is a video game sales tracking website that provides weekly sales figures of console software and hardware by region. The site was launched in June 2005 and is run by a small team of ten. Presently, users find the visualizations time consuming, difficult to comprehend and navigate.
Based on this background, we decided to do the visualization analytics work for this company to help them better show their users the video games' world and the marketing situation.

Motivation

As students trained in Visual Analytics, we have volunteered to help them provide user-friendly and informative visualizations to cater to its users by utilizing visualizations tools and tapping on our knowledge gained from school, work, independent learning and by referencing reputable resources in the analytics industry.

Approach

1. HTML: This language was used in order to design our web application to organize and allow easy-navigations for our visualizations and is hosted on the RawGit server.
2. Javascript: D3.js was used to develop the DataMaps.
3. Rshiny: Rshiny’s user friendly platform and large library of packages was used to develop the interactive dashboard through the use of packages such as ggplot2, plotly and dygraphs.
4. The interactive dashboard allows users to filter based on requirements such as categories, time-series and observe the change in trend in an easy-to-understand and user-friendly environment.
5. The radar chart provides a unique form of visualization of multivariate data in the form of a two-dimensional chart of three or more quantitative variables.

Challenge

Challenges	Our Approach
Unfamiliar with using d3.js	Browsing the web for useful reference materials such as tutorials and open source codes Using Rshiny, a platform which is similar to D3, but more user-friendly and easier to pick up.
Hard to find the business use for the project	Learning from similar visualizations on the internet Considering what users want, from the business and non-business perspective

Outcome

1. To gain knowledge about new visualization techniques by utilizing d3.js and RShiny.
2. Applying our knowledge gained from lessons, reading materials and references to develop and implement these tools to an actual dataset.
3. Gain valuable insights that were not previously available through the use of our analytical tools.

Reference

Using d3:

• d3 tips and tricks

Datamap:

• [1]

Rshiny:

• [2]

Datasource:

• [3]
Others:
• [4]