Schedule:
In class 2/12 – Introduction to the Design Challenge
Initial Analysis (Weds 2/18 ahead of Thurs Lecture): Tasks and Critique of the Standard Design (discussion)
Individual Designs (Weds 2/25 ahead of Thurs Lecture) – Turn-in link on Canvas
Critiques (Weds 3/4 ahead of Thurs Lecture) – See clarification post for rubric and turn-in link.
Team Brainstorm (in class 3/5)
Objective
The goal of this assignment is to give you some practice at applying the basic ideas we’ve learned about visualization and graphic design. The idea is to pick a simple “data visualization” problem that you’ve probably seen, try to understand the task, think about the standard designs with respect to these tasks, try to invent some new designs to address tasks, practice critiquing designs, and to think about evaluation.
The specific problem chosen (Airline Route Maps) is hopefully simple enough in terms of its domain, that everyone is enough of an “expert user.” You might see it as a cartography problem (since the standard solutions are maps), but it can be seen more broadly. The data itself is a network (in terms of abstract data type), and we won’t talk about network approaches until later in the class. You can read ahead (Chapter 9 of Munzner’s book is a good start), but you can also try to build off the basic principles you already know.
For this challenge, we won’t actually provide the real data. We just want you to think about the problem in the abstract, and make the designs as “data sketches” (with made up simple data). So, when you create a design, you can make up a fictitious airline – but give it the kinds of properties that show off the challenges and solutions.
Also, for this challenge we want you to create your designs by hand. We encourage you to do everything on paper (with pens, markers, colored pencils, …). If you want to draw on a computer, that’s OK, but you will need to print things out. Conversely, at one step, you will need to get your paper design into the computer – but we’ll help with that.
The Traditional Design
You’ve probably seen an airline route map in the back of the magazine on an airplane. Usually it’s a map, with points for cities, and arcs (or curved edges) connecting city pairs with flights.
Don’t confuse Airline Route Maps with the Route Maps we learned about in the “Think Differently” assignment.
Here are the pages from the Delta in-flight magazine (click for scanned PDF):
Here is one for United that I found online:
There’s a website http://www.airlineroutemaps.com where you can see lots of these. If you dig, you can probably find some non-traditional designs (but don’t look too hard for them – the idea is for you to come up with alternative designs yourself). Here’s one for United, Allegiant (a smaller US Carrier)…
They’re not all this bad… But when an airline has lots of flights to lots of cities, showing this information gets tricky!
What’s the Data? What’s the Task?
Hopefully, those are the first two questions that you are asking.
Part of this assignment is for you to figure this out. So, before you read further (spoiler alert), think about those questions. For task, you can probably think of lots of things you might want to do with “this data.” So we need to define this data.
Have you thought about what the data is yet?
For this assignment, we limit ourselves to the route connection data. That is, all we know is a list of the city pairs the airline flies between. Just a yes or no – does the airline fly between those two cities. We can have some extra info (like where the cities are on the map) if we need it for making pictures.
As far as tasks – think about what you might want to do with information about what routes an airline flies.
The Design Challenge
Here are the things we need to do:
For the first phase, we need to consider what the tasks are for this data. After that, we can critique the standard design. Each person will do this for Wed, 2/18. Create a list of tasks, describing the tasks that might go with this kind of data (what could you have wanted to do with a route map? or with the information you’d expect to get out of it). In your task discussion, consider how you might evaluate designs. Then, critique the standard route map design. Consider what tasks it is good for, and which tasks it is not good for. You discussion of tasks will be created as a discussion, so you can see what other people come up with for tasks (and discuss them). Your critique will be handed in as a discussion.
For the second phase, you need to come up with 3 different designs (that are not the standard design). There’s a question as to what constitute “different” (from the standard design, or from each other). Hopefully, you can come up with something that is “obviously” very different. A baseline rule of thumb: if the brief description of one would apply to the other, then maybe they aren’t different. Of course, you can explain why a design is different (from the standard, or from your other designs).
You need to come up with at least 3 different designs. You may turn in up to 5. If you turn in more than 3, we will only pick the best 3 to look at. That said, designers often like to work by trying lots of designs, so you might want to make lots of different ideas, and just write-up/hand-in the 3 you think are best.
For each design, hand in a separate PDF file (1 PDF per design) that has:
- A rationale for the design (this should explain what tasks you are trying to address)
- A description of the design
- A picture (or pictures) – these are probably sketches, based on “fake data.” But try to convey the essence. You might not be able to draw all arcs, or …
- Do not put your name in your PDFs. Some of the critiques below will be done anonymously.
Some thoughts on design:
- Part of the challenge is that these maps are printed, so they are static images. At least 2 of the designs you turn in need to work in this form (e.g. they can go in the in-flight magazine). So, if you want to have a dynamic or interactive design, you can throw one in.
- We haven’t specified what airline, so you don’t have data. Imagine a fictitious airline with a network similar to one of the major US carriers (look at the United and Delta examples). It would have a few hub cities scattered around the country. It would fly to most major (and most minor) cities from at least one of these hubs.
- We recommend making sketches of your design. Print out a blank map (link here, bl.ock here) – or start with a blank page. You can sketch on a computer if you prefer (using a drawing tool). If its easier for you to make a picture by writing a program, that’s OK. But what we want is the picture. Remember, the goal is to create a “sketch” that conveys the essence of your design, not to make a beautiful example of it. It needs to be good enough that (combined with the description), someone can understand it and critique it.
For the third phase, Critique:
- We will give some of your designs (probably not all of them) to other students to critique. You will get a few to critique as well.
- We will ask you to turn your critiques in. We will evaluate your critiques!
- The critiques will be used in the assessment of your design, but only as a check against our (the professor and TAs) assessment. If the student critiques don’t match the staff assessment, the staff will double check.
- You should write your critiques as if it will be given to the person who made the design. However, we might not give them out. Putting your name in your critique is optional – if you don’t it will be anonymous to the design’s author.
Mechanics:
For Wednesday, February 18 (analysis): Post your analysis (discussion of tasks, critique of the standard design) to the discussion. Over the course of the week, you might want to discuss various tasks with people to get ideas to inspire your designs.
For Wednesday, February 25 (design): You will turn in your 3 designs (each as a separate PDF) to Canvas. These will not be in a discussion.
On Thursday or Friday, Feb 26 or 27, you will receive mail from Alper with 3 designs to critique.
For Wednesday, March 4 (critique), you must submit your 3 critiques as 3 separate files.
We will have an in-class “brainstorming” session to go over the results of the designs/critiques. It will hopefully happen on Thursday, March 5 – however, we may not be able to assemble the critiques in time.
