You do not have to re-use the same designs/stories as you turned in for the sketches and drafts. Hopefully, you will use the feedback that you have gotten to make things that are even better for the final!
You might notice that at the right edge of the page there is a link to Design Challenge 2. Details may change, but the assignment is pretty much final. There’s even example designs and data.
We will talk about the assignment in class tomorrow (10/10).
To clarify, on the DC1 final handins (due Friday 10/12):
- You need to turn in PDFs. If you feel that a PDFs does not capture your design well (e.g., if you have interaction), you can explain in the description. However, the point of the assignment is to create “static, self-contained” pages (with captions, …)
- We really want each thing as a separate PDF. This means a PDF for the overall description, and a separate PDF for each design (which means at least 5). It would be useful if you named things to identify them “description.pdf”, “story1.pdf”, “story1-alternate.pdf”, … – or similar.
- Please do not put your names on your designs. This will make anonymous critique possible (which we may do).
You may wonder “am I better off being on time, or being late and having a better assignment?” Of course, its best to have a great assignment and be on time. However, being a little late is not a big deal if it makes a difference in quality. Remember, we look at lateness over the semester, and even though “late” is binary for Canvas (1 minute is the same as 1 week), we are aware of the subtleties. If you’re only late on 1 or 2 things, it is different than if you’re chronically late. However, next week DC2 starts – and you don’t want to fall behind on that!
I realized that people didn’t get as much feedback on DC1 Sketches as I had hoped (in Wednesday, I’ll show you how I figured that out!)
So, I tried to go through them quickly and give some feedback on the Sketches and the Rough Drafts. It was very quick, so I couldn’t give very detailed feedback – and generally, it was more about pointing out potential problems (that might lead to a lower grade in the final) than to praise things I liked (there are some that are really great!).
Some general comments:
- Remember, that we are looking for things that are multi-variate, use good encoding choices, and are well “implemented” (in terms of design)
- Remember, that we will look at static PDFs – interactivity comes later
- Your “story” is connected to a task – make sure your design works well for it.
Hopefully, the feedback will help you make things even better for the final. To those who got little feedback, I apologize – but there was no quick and useful thing I could think of to say.
I found out that a few people have a class immediately before our class, that is far away. Which explains why they have a hard time getting to class on time.
I think that many people are in this same class. CS765 – it’s a good combination with our class.
So…
If you have a class until 10:45 – please let me know. Tell me what class it is, and where it is. If enough people have this problem, I’ll try to figure out a solution.
Class Meetings
- Mon, Oct 8 – Lecture:Evaluation
- Wed, Oct 10 – ICE: Arrival Distributions and DC2
- Fri, Oct 12 – No Class
Week Deadlines
- Reading: Week 6 – Evaluation (due Monday – preferably before class)
- Quiz 06: 6: Evaluation (due Tuesday)
- Online Discussion 06: Evaluation (first post due Wednesday)
- Seek and Find 06: Critique (due Friday)
- Design Challenge: DC1:Final (due Friday)
So last week, we took a detour to talk about how to make visualizations. This week, we’ll try to figure out how to determine if the visualizations we make are any good. The readings get at this from different sides.
I realize there’s a design challenge due at the end of the week. But these are particularly important readings. The concepts in #1 (Munzner) are really important (and can extend beyond visualization). #2 Cairo gets in a differently useful, and thought provoking way (and you’ll recognize his example). #3 Tufte points at some things that can go horribly wrong with a visualization. Chris North’s article (#4) is so short that he doesn’t actually tell you about his cool experiments – but really gets at why its so hard to assess whether tools are good.
Which leads to #5 which takes on a very different meaning given the recent news. I did not plan for the timing. I will change this paper from “required” to “strongly recommended.” I still really recommend reading it – it’s a great example of trying to get an experiment right (even if the original paper it is trying to replicate may not have).
You may want to look at this week’s learning goals Learning Goals 6: Week 6 – Evaluation.
Readings (due Mon, Oct 8 – preferably before class)
Evaluation is such a big and hard question. This will get at the key concepts.
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- Analysis (Chapter 4 from Munzner’s Visualization Analysis & Design) (Munzner-04-Validation.pdf 0.5mb)
- The five qualities of great visualizations (Chapter 2 of The Truthful Art) (theTruthfulArtCh2.pdf 10.0mb)
- Graphical Integrity (Chapter 2 of Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) (1-VDQI-2-GraphicalIntegrity.pdf 62.2mb)
- Chris North, “Visualization Viewpoints: Toward Measuring Visualization Insight”, IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, 26(3): 6-9, May/June 2006. pdf (doi; 4 pages)This is a good introduction to the challenges of visualization evaluation. And it’s short.
Optional
This one was supposed to be required, but I decided to reduce the amount of reading. It’s still strongly recommended.
- Dragicevic, P., & Jansen, Y. (2018). “Blinded with Science or Informed by Charts? A Replication Study.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 24(1 (Proceedings InfoVis 2017)), 1–1. DOI PDFI want you to read an empirical paper. I pick this one because it takes quite a simple question and tries to be painstakingly thorough with it. Moreover, it is mainly trying to replicate an experiment that got a lot of press. While the authors didn’t set out to contradict the prior paper, it seems they got a different answer to the same question.
The “Chartjunk” paper would be required reading – except that we’ve already learned about it from Cairo, The Functional Art Chapter 3 (theFunctionalArtCh3.pdf 11.4mb). It’s worth looking at if you’re really interested in the topic. And the Few blog posting may be more valuable than the article itself
- Bateman, S., Mandryk, R.L., Gutwin, C., Genest, A.M., McDine, D., Brooks, C. 2010. Useful Junk? The Effects of Visual Embellishment on Comprehension and Memorability of Charts. In ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2010), Atlanta, GA, USA. 2573-2582. Best paper award. project page w/pdf (doi). (10 pages)This is a pretty provacative paper. You can pick apart the details (and many have), but I think the main ideas are important. There is a ton written about this paper (those of the Tufte religon view this as blasphemy). Stephen Few has a very coherent discussion of it here. In some sense, I’d say it’s as useful than the original paper – but I would really suggest you look at the original first. While more level-headed than most, Few still has an Tufte-ist agenda. Reading the Few article is highly recommended – in some ways, its more interesting than the original.
Chapter 4 of Munzner is based on an earlier paper that was quite influential (at least to my thinking). It is somewhat redundant with what is in the chapter, but for completeness, you might want to see the original:
- Munzner, T. (2009). A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 15(6), 921–928. (pdf) (doi)
In case you cannot get enough of Tufte, you can get his ideas on what is good (Ch5) and bad (Ch6).
- Fundamental Principles of Analytical Design (Chapter 5 of Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence) (4-BeautEvid-5-FundamentalPrinciples.pdf 14.4mb)
- Corruption in Evidence Presentations (Chapter 6 of Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence) (4-BeautEvid-6-Corruption.pdf 15.0mb)
If you’re wondering whether the deceptions Tufte mentions actually fool people, here’s an empirical study of it:
Just to remind people…
The course policies are long, but they were a reading assignment back at the beginning.
Here 4 things (direct quotes from the policy) that might need some repeating/clarification (italics are commentary):
- If you are going to miss class, let us know. If you can’t tell us before, please tell us afterwards. Please send email to both the TA and the instructor. Telling us why you are missing (or missed) class is optional.
Please send email – if you tell us in class or in the hallway, we may forget, or may not recognize you, …
Please send email before the class – especially if its a planned absence like a conference. If not, please do it promptly so the TA doesn’t have to deal with a flurry of emails.
This is only an issue if your attendance is a problem. If you only miss a few classes its OK. - You cannot “make up” in-class classwork. In general, there is no way to “make up” what happens in class.
This is in terms of keeping track. See #1 above, but missing 1 or 2 is not a problem.
I am posting the descriptions, so you can try the assignment “at home” afterwards, however, a big part of the ICEs is working on it with others in class. - Please come on time! Because of the way the room is set up, if you come late, you will disrupt your classmates. Please try to be on time.
Many people come on time (thank you!), but lots of people are still coming in late. UPDATE: I found out a lot of people are coming from 765 which is clear across campus. - Be aware of the class schedule. The class is overscheduled: we will generally meet twice a week, but there may be exceptions.
For example, there is no class event Friday Oct 5, and there are required classes on Oct 31 and Nov 2.
The DC1 rough drafts (due Friday, October 5) were not well described.
What we’d like is that you turn things in in final format – as PDFs, with appropriate captions, …
These don’t have to be the designs that you’ll submit in the end, but hopefully, they will be made with the data set and tool you’ll be using for the final.
We are asking for these so we can make sure you’ve worked out the issues in producing visualizations for the final thing. We want you to know that your data is good enough, that the tools you’re using work with your data, that you can make PDF files, that you can figure out how to add captions, … What you turn in can be simple visualizations. You can turn in better ones (and more of them) next week.
update: this reading is now only strongly recommended, not required
One of our readings this week is about Pierre Dragicevic and Yvonne Jansen trying to replicate a study done in Brian Wansink’s laboratory. I like the paper because of the care it takes in trying to understand what experimental details matter and really understanding what a (seemingly) simple experiment really means.
It turns out that Brian Wansink’s work has (very recently) come into question more broadly (see this article in Science magazine’s website).
I promised to give as much warning as possible when we won’t have the normal Monday/Wednesday/(optional Friday) schedule…
For the week of October 29 to November 2, we will have required classes on Wednesday and Friday (but not Monday):
- Monday (Oct 29) No Class
- Wednesday (October 31) Lecture: Interaction
- Friday (November 2) In-Class Exercise (interactive re-designs)