Recumbent Steam

https://elputnam.github.io/RecumbentSteam/

For this sketch, I am working with the activity levels collected by my FitBit, which break down quality of activity to sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, and very active. In particular, I am interested in drawing attention not to the rigor of my activities, which tends to be the case with the FitBit, but instead the moments of inaction. I started by using the values of activity levels, which are all drawn from the same random month from May 2020 to October 2021, to influence the hue and movements of the circles. I then incorporated the step values for the corresponding month. Again, to draw attention to inactivity, the design of the steps visualisation became more compressed as the value increased. The circular motion of the squares correlating to step counts reference the cyclical nature of collecting FitBit data, which is broken down into daily and hourly units. Time as calculated by the FitBit is presented through activity.

I used a random title generator when developing the title, Recumbent Steam. It was originally Recumbent Stem, which I felt worked well with the interest in conveying inactivity. I altered Stem, which brought to mind the popular acronym for Science Technology Engineering, and Mathematics, to Steam to reflect the popular adaption that incorporates Art.