Beta, did you eat?

For this visualization, I tracked six data fields:

• Date of communication
  
  

• My time zone during communication (New York)
  
  

• My mother’s time zone during communication (Saudi Arabia)
  
  

• The meal referenced in her question (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Other)
  
  

• How she asked the question (Text or FaceTime)
  
  

• My response (Yes or No)

Below is a screenshot of a portion of the collected data.

I wanted the visualization to tell a story while remaining closely tied to the theme. Two ideas immediately stood out from the dataset: time and food. This led me to think about an analog clock and a plate , both of which share a circular form.

Since the project coincided with the month of Ramadan, a holy month of fasting for Muslims, the concept became more personal. I was spending Ramadan away from my mother for the second time in the US. Every year, she prepares soup for our family to break our fast. This memory led me to the idea of alphabet soup, with letters floating inside the bowl. I began combining these elements into an initial sketch in Figma.

The plate features calligraphy incorporating both English and Arabic numerals. The English numerals represent the New York time zone, while the Arabic numerals represent Saudi Arabia’s time zone, which is eight hours ahead. For example, 12 AM/PM in New York corresponds to “٨” (8 AM/PM) in Saudi Arabia. The same relationship is shown for 3, 6, and 9.

The letters in the alphabet soup represent the meal my mom asked about:

• B — Breakfast
  
  

• L — Lunch
  
  

• D — Dinner
  
  

• O — Other (primarily Ramadan-related meals)
  
  

The position of each letter on the plate indicates the time my mom contacted me. From any position, viewers can read both the New York and Saudi Arabia times, as well as determine AM or PM based on the associated meal.

Additional visual encodings include:

• Solid letters indicate that I responded, “Yes, I ate.”
  
  

• Outlined letters indicate, “No, I didn’t eat.”
  
  

• Straight letters represent FaceTime conversations.
  
  

• Zig-zag letters represent text exchanges.
  
  

Finally, I translated the Figma concept into a hand-drawn version on a postcard. This was a requirement for the submission of the project before it was made into a poster.