In light of Mike G’s talk on Tue at the Physics dept., the following article from NYT today is very relevant.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/photoshop-and-photography-when-is-it-real/?ref=technology
This week’s lectures were conversations about low-level perception.
Mike’s Notes: 10-02-23-Perception101.pdf
The first week in March will be centered around the Design Challenge. But on Tuesday, we’ll keep working through Colin Ware’s Book.
- Tuesday (3/2) – We’ll discuss mid-level vision and layout – the reading assignment is Chapter 3 of Visual Thinking for Design. You need to comment on the reading before class. We’ll probably use some of class time for groups to interact.
- Thursday (3/4) – We’ll look at the initial solutions to the Design Challenge. Each group will get (approximately) 10 minutes to present their solutions. The domain experts will be there to discuss. We’ll have a projector (and my laptop if you want to bring things on a USB stick or the web – or you can bring your own laptop). Remember to post a description of your initial solution(s) before class. More details about the mechanics of the Design Challenge will be made available as we figure them out.
For Tuesday, March 2nd, the Reading is Chapter 3 of Visual Thinking for Design.
This week, the reading is intentionally light so you can be more focused on the Design Challenge.
Before 8am on the 2nd, please make a comment about this Chapter as a comment to this posting to help structure our conversation in class.
When we talk about colors and color harmonies, its often hard to see what kinds of things pros use to create their images. This is a really interesting visualization of the color palettes used in ads. The images are pretty striking: Lucious (by Viegas and Wattenberg).
Some of you have asked about what are the “expectations” for what you will create for the design challenge.
I have one very elegant solution to the design problem, but implementing the idea may take longer than 4th March deadline. What is your expectation in this work?
Clearly, it is easy to come up with designs that are too hard to implement. Indeed, its probably possible to come up with designs that are too much effort to really be worthwhile for the problem.
If you have an idea, you should try to prototype it. Prototype can have a wide range of meanings. From very “low fidelity” prototypes, to detailed implementations. If you have an idea that would be really hard to implement, maybe you’ll want to prototype it first using some simple mockup – pencil and paper sketches, or a storyboard of pictures of what it would look like. For other ideas, it might be practical to get an implementation such that you can try it out on real data.
There is a tradeoff: on one hand, its nice to have more ideas than you can implement, or fancier ideas than you can implement. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for being able to try your ideas on real data. There’s also something to be said for ideas that are easy to implement: if you have an otherwise awesome design that would be too time consuming (costly) to implement, in practice, that might be less useful than something that is more practical.
For March 4th, your focus should be on having ideas your ideas in a form that you can convey to the domain experts for feedback. It is more compelling if they can see things on real data (and “real” simulated data). But it might be just as (or more) compelling if you have a totally amazing design that you explain with pictures and good arguments.
My hope is that each group will do a lot of thinking and designing, and at least a little bit of implementing.
Here is another set of real data. This data comes from a single venue, and represents 4 “stories” that the students wrote over the semester (its 1,2,4,10). Is there a progression over time?
Here is some real data for the design challenge.
These are 8×8 matrices (for an 8 concept epistemic frame). There were 3 sets of students (practicum, game, and course). Each of these matrices represents the average over all students in the set (known as venue) and all of the “stories” in the venue.
If you want, the labels for the 8 nodes (in order) are:
| S_investigating |
| S_detailed_description |
| K_story |
| K_reporting |
| K_reader |
| V_informing_the_public |
| V_engaging_reader_story |
| E_rich_details |
(sorry, this post was scheduled to appear last week, but the WordPress scheduling mechanism doesn’t work 🙁 )
This week, you’ll be working on the Design Challenge and will have done the first readings on Perception.
Class will be a little odd because of some timing constraints and to give teams time to meet.
- February 23 (tuesday) – We’ll start our conversation on Perception discussing the readings. We’ll stop as if it were a “normal” (50 minute) class to give teams time to meet. Also, I will be giving a talk in the physics department (if you’re curious to see what I have to say).
Chaos and Complex Systems Seminar:
On Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 12:30-1:30 p.m. in 4274 Chamberlin Hall, Michael Gleicher, UW Department of Computer Sciences, will speak on “Pictures from piles of data.”
ABSTRACT: Most of my work is focused around a single (broad) question: How can we use our understanding of human perception and artistic traditions to improve our tools for communicating and data understanding? In problems ranging from molecular biology to video editing, we are faced with a deluge of data. In this talk, I’ll survey some of the ways we’ve tried to turn this problem into solutions. I’ll discuss our efforts in scientific visualization and multimedia, showing how we can use ideas from art and perception to create novel tools for a range of problems. Time permitting, I might also discuss some of my efforts to create a cross-disciplinary course on Visualization.
Refreshments will be served.
- February 26 (thursday) – we’ll continue the discussion of perception and visual cognition. We’ll also take some time to talk about the design challenge – possibly to discuss some of the topics that you wish you knew more about (but won’t get to see until later in the semester).
http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=47264
This is a really simple, but a simply amazing visualization. Proof that one doesn’t need moving parts, fireworks and sound-effects to make a wonderful visualization that conveys the subject matter effectively.