The Week in Vis 03 (Mon, Sep 14-Fri, Sep 18): Abstraction

in Weeks in Vis

Week number 3…

We’re slowly getting the mechanics worked out - hopefully you are able to do all of the Parts of Class, and the synchronous classes haven’t been too problematic.

This week’s topic is abstraction: how do we talk about tasks and data in a general way.

Readings 03: Abstraction - will get at the main ideas, and suggest some things to look at beyond the minimum.

This week’s driving question is “How do we talk about Visualization / think about Visualization?” - which leads to the question of abstraction - how we consider visualization in general ways.

I phrase the question this way to emphasize a point: we want to use abstraction as a tool to talk about visualization. A big goal is to develop a vocabulary to discuss visualization in a way that is independent of its details. Especially with task abstraction it is easy to get nitpicky about how different people like to define things. Instead, my goal is to develop some shared vocabulary for talking about task and data.

There are two parts here: data abstraction and task abstraction.

Data abstraction is (relatively) straightforward. But there are useful terminology and distinctions that will prove helpful as we start to connect data to visuals.

Task abstraction is much murkier. There is no one right answer. There are many different ways to describe and categorize tasks - many of which will prove useful. From the readings and class activities, hopefully you will get to see many of them.

This week is the beginning of the first design Challenge. Design Challenge 1 will take place over the next few weeks. There is a phase/milestone each week. Generally, the deadlines are on Mondays - so this week’s work is due on Monday of the following week. The first phase is DC1-1: Tableau Tests (due Mon, Sep 21).

For the design challenge this week, you will be getting started with Tableau. This is both a useful tool for making visualization as well as an interesting way to see visualization concepts (like data abstractions) in action.