Whale Hello!
Description of Translation Device
My 3 sketches:
1. Compare book reviews from two different book sites- Goodreads API and Google Books API and NYT Bestsellers API
2. Track whales to see if they avoid heavily polluted areas in the ocean using The Whale Museum API
3. Visualize marine waste pollution and the effects on marine life using The Whale Museum API
API Sources:
https://www.goodreads.com/api
https://developers.google.com/books
http://hotline.whalemuseum.org/api
For this assignment, I initially wanted to visualize the marine waste pollution and the effects on marine life. Through my research from one of my classes at DT, I learned that there are multiple Gyres in the ocean that traps waste and plastic. I wanted to compare the location with where marine life is spotted. I was set on using The Whale Museum’s API because their data came from people all over the world. This went along with the feminist data principle I chose to reference- principle #3: elevate and embodiment. Since data feminism teaches us to value multiple forms of knowledge, I wanted to use the information people from around the world gathered. However, as I started to use The Whale Museum’s API, I noticed that their data is limited to the public. I was only able to receive limited data when I searched for all of their whale information. So I decided to narrow my search, and to use certain whale species. I used 4 different datasets: Blue Whale, Killer Whale, Sperm Whale, and Humpback Whale. Since my initial plan was to track their locations, I used a mapbox API and followed the map calculation by Daniel Shiffman in his earthquake coding challenge. With the map calculation, I was able to precisely map the latitude and longitude of each location of the whale sighting.
After I was finished with mapping out the whale sightings, each whale represented with different colors, I wanted to create a feature where if the mouse hovered over each point, the information of the whale sightings would appear. However, because I used the translate feature, this was very complicated and in the end, I was unable to get the hover feature to work. In the end, I decided to create 4 buttons that represented each of the whales and their designated colors, and use the hover features for this button that shows certain information of each whale.
Overall Reflection
This assignment was very challenging since I wasn’t able to fully grasp the concept of APIs until I began using them. I think the most difficult part was trying to understand the API that I chose for this project. The API was an open API so a key was not necessary, but the dataset was very confusing to understand. The description was also misleading since I assumed I would be receiving recent data on whale sightings. However, looking through the JSON file, I noticed that some data were from the 1990s! I was also hoping to receive more data but I guess they only allow certain data to go public for the safety of marine life. As for my design, I think it responds to the feminist data principles. I tried to incorporate knowledge from all over the world regarding the whales, and the information that shows up when hovering over the buttons are from National Geographics, which conducts research on these marine animals making the source reliable.
The original datasets were pretty confusing to understand. There were many parameters to each dataset, where some were redundant. Through the translation device I created, I was able to organize the information within these datasets, and actually visualize some of the data (location). I also like the larger buttons that show information regarding each type of whale species because you get to see where they inhabit in the ocean.