Data Visualization
Emotional data visualization of earthquake memorial
A data visualization of our emotional journey through the earthquake memorial.
We travelled to Bhuj as part of our storytelling course, not just to learn, but to feel. We were then asked to translate that feeling into a story of our own, capturing what we experienced and expressing it visually, in any form we chose, whether through a website or another medium.
It didn't feel like a design project which we were going for, just another academic journey. Conversations were loud, cameras were out and curiosity was high, out professors weren't our professors just people enjoying their trip with us all.
We photographed memories, had new experiences and became a calm escape from our tight assignment schedule
Our brief was simple, yet unsettling: Translate what you felt into a website. Not the architecture. Not the history. Not the statistics.
Each emotion experienced during the journey was treated as data.
Not quantified, but structured.
The interface didn’t explain grief. It was made for the user arrive there.
Walking through Smritivan felt like moving through layers of emotion rather than space.
We translated this walk into a visual map not of buildings, but of emotional states. Each point represents how we felt at that moment in the journey.
This wasn’t meant to be read like a floor plan. It was meant to be felt like a trace.
Smritivan does not speak loudly.
It allows absence to exist as presence.
This video in the website marks a pause a slowing down. The visuals retreat. The noise disappears. The interface breathes.
Here, the design stops explaining and starts holding space.
Because some things don’t need interpretation only time.
At this point, the story introduces facts.
But not as headlines. Not as shock.
The scale of loss is revealed through human comparison crowds, distances, everyday actions. Statistics are grounded in bodies, movement, and space.
This section doesn’t aim to inform alone. It aims to make magnitude imaginable.
Smritivan is not a monument frozen in time.
It continues through visitors, stories, and shared silence. Each visit becomes another layer added to memory.
The website ends the way the memorial does not with closure, but with continuation.
A reminder that remembering is an active act.
This project changed how I understand design.
It taught me that:
Data can be emotional
UX can be quiet
And storytelling doesn’t always need words
Sometimes, design’s role is simply to make space for feeling.
This website is not an explanation of Smritivan.
It is a digital echo of what it feels like to walk through it.
