The photos above give a full description of the Cupcakes Index experience— from baking process to tasting process.
The standard graph (from least happy to happiest)— created in Processing with an output PDF— in order to make the laser cut version that was then mashed up with the cupcake liner contributed data.
Planning to color track the white dots that show in the projected image as the centerpoints for where people think the cupcake lies on the sweetness scale— making the translation between the two boards clearer— though currently one can use a finger to track where the liner falls on the formal scale.
These photos show the process of the presentation:
1. Eat cupcakes!
2. Map their sweetness.
3. Consider how your mapping matches the formal index— a live feed of the mapped board is projected onto the formal Happiness Index graph.
Testing Day
The sugariest cupcakes stick together…
First photo: a general test of how people taste varieties of sugar in cupcakes.
Second: the process of recording values from a non-excel data set— I traced the outlines of the bar chart and converted these heights to values.
Third: interest in comparing the data set of “How happy were you yesterday?” vs. the overall “Overall, how happy are you these days?”
I decided to go with the simple set of “Overall, how happy are you these days?” because the report found that dataset to be more valuable, informative and true to the purpose of conducting studies on happiness.
The “yesterday” data set, however, is reference in its own way in that when people taste cupcakes, many people’s (although not all) happiness immediately spikes— but it is a transient pleasure rather than a lasting pleasure.
