Personal consumption visualization

For 17 days, I kept track of all physical items that I acquired and discarded.  This poster provides a fun, clean visualization of the resulting data.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Our assignment was to track everything we threw away over the course of two weeks.  I was interested not only in the way physical items left our lives, but in the full timeline of possession from start to finish, so I chose to track everything I acquired as well.  I thought tracking both the influx and outflux of these items would tell a more engaging visual story for my poster, and that there was a better likelihood that something could be learned by looking at the net gain or loss.

The story of my possession transactions is illustrated in two activities: purchasing the item at a store, and throwing the item into a trash can or recycling bin.  I was satisfied with the resulting illustration, but I felt that it lacked context.  After brainstorming for a bit and incorporating feedback from my critiques, I decided that the poster needed some display of quantity to complement the material breakdowns.  The dot chart was added as an unobtrusive way to display quantity in a simple style that fit with the rest of the poster.