DC1 Peer Critique

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As part of Design Challenge 1, you must critique 3 of your classmate’s designs. Design Challenge 1 (DC1): One dataset / Four Stories (peer-review) is a component of Phase 4 of DC1.

Here are detailed instructions on how they will work.

Your peer reviews will be provided (anonymously) to your classmates (including the visualization author). To make the anonymity work correctly, we will follow the procedure below. It is important that you turn in DC1 Phase 3 on time, and that your PDFs have no identifying information in them (e.g. do not put your name, your NetID).

Your peer reviews will count for 20% of your DC1 grade. Note: the critiques you write (of others’ visualizations) are part of your grade. The critiques you receive (from other students) are not considered in your grade.

This part is independent of the other parts of DC1-4: Final Handin (due Mon, Oct 12).

Like the other parts of DC1 Phase 4, the peer critiques are due on Monday, October 12th. We cannot accept late assignments after Monday October 19th.

How this will work:

  1. The course staff will assign each student to a random number from 1-52 (there are 52 students in class). We will tell each student their number - but please don’t share your number with other students. The TA will send you your number by email (note: the email came as a Canvas announcement from the instructor and a Piazza announcement from the TA) on or before Tuesday, October 6th.

  2. The course staff will choose a design from each student who has turned in design for Design Challenge 1 Phase 3 in a timely fashion. If you do not turn in a design, you will be penalized, and we will use a design from last year for peer critique (so reviewers have something to review).

  3. We will name the selected designs NN.pdf (where NN is the student number) and place them in a folder on Canvas. All students will have access to all 52 PDF files. We will make an announcement when this folder is ready. The folder is DC1_Peer_Review.

  4. Each student is “assigned” to critique the 3 designs with numbers after theirs (using modulo arithmetic to wrap back to 1 if you go off the end). For example, if your number is 17, you must review 18.pdf, 19.pdf and 20.pdf. If your number is 50, you need to review 51, 52, and 1.

  5. If you want to critique more than 3 designs, you may critique the next few after the 3 that you were required to review. For example, if your number is 19, you are required to review 20, 21 and 22, and you may optionally review 23, 24 and (as many as you want in order). Reviews beyond the first three are optional, they will not count towards your grade.

  6. You can get the PDFs for the designs you need to critique by looking in the directory (see #3).

  7. Enter your critiques in this google form. You must be using your UW Madison G-Suite credentials. Please do not identify yourself in the body of the critique. The form will ask you which design you are critiquing (the number). The specific questions are detailed below. We suggest that you write your critiques off-line and copy/paste them into the form.

  8. After the assignment is due, we will release all critiques (without any name information, but with the number of the design they are critiquing). This way, you can look for the critiques of your design (we will tell you which designs are yours). You can also look for other critiques of the designs that you critiqued (to compare how good your critique was). If you want, you can read any, or all of the critiques. Note: all critiques will be made available to the entire class.

  9. The course staff will grade the 3 critiques you wrote and assign a grade and post it on Canvas. We will assign 0-20 points (to correspond to the 20% of the DC1 grade this counts for). We are grading the critiques.

The review form has three questions beyond the number of the visualization:

  1. Summarize the “story” that the visualization is trying to convey. If you feel the visualization lacks a story, explain. This is generally a sentence or two.

  2. Describe the visualization (preferably in terms of its encodings, but you can describe it in terms of common chart types). This is generally a few sentences (1-3). This is an opportunity to note the key design decisions.

  3. Provide a critique of the visualization. While the central focus should be the design’s effectiveness at conveying the story, you can/should consider specific decisions that the designer made. This is generally a few paragraphs.

Some notes:

  1. Critiques usually identify a few specific details and connect them to the overall effectiveness (or lack thereof). You don’t need to be exhaustive and list many details, but you should discuss some.

  2. Critiques can discuss good and bad elements of a design. Often critiques involve some of each. It is rare that there is nothing good.

  3. Remember our framework for critique from the beginning of the semester: identify specific design decisions that influence the effectiveness and connect them to principles.

Rubric:

  • 5 pts – Did all 3 reviews correctly
  • 5 pts per critique
    • 5 – Great critique. Has all required parts (acknowledgments, specifics connected to principles). Commits no bad practices. Offers interesting insight or multiple insights.
    • 4 – Good critique. Has all required parts (acknowledgments, specifics connected to principles). Commits no bad practices.
    • 3 – Marginal Critique. Missing a required part, or commits bad practices.
    • 2 – Poor critique. Multiple problems (missing parts, multiple bad practices, …)
    • 1 – Unacceptable critique – we couldn’t even show this to the author.
    • 0 - Nothing turned in