The Week in Vis 06 (Mon, Oct 5-Fri, Oct 9): Scale

This week’s topic is “Too Much Stuff” - what do we do as our data gets big? Scale is a fundamental challenge in visualization. We’ll learn some categories of strategies and how to apply them in our designs. Design Challenge 1 (DC1): One dataset / Four Stories wraps up, and we’re trying to do an “in-class design exercise” as an online, asynchronous activity.

Readings 06: Scale - are unusual because it has you pick some of the readings, and has things that are more of a “doing” than a reading.

• Online Discussion 06: Scale (due Tue, Oct 6) is first parts of the Arrivals Exercise.
• Seek and Find 06: Scale (due Fri, Oct 9) asks you to find visualizations in the wild.
• This week, we’ll have more typical lectures.
• Survey 06: Scale (due Fri, Oct 9) - these are helping me help you, as well as (hopefully) helping you reflect on the material.
• And, of course Design Challenge 1 is ongoing. Last week, DC1-3: Design Handins (due Mon, Oct 5) had you turn in most of your designs. This week DC1-4: Final Handin (due Mon, Oct 12) will ask you to turn in your final documents, and remaining visualizations, and to do peer critiques of some of your classmates’ work.

The title “Too Much Stuff” comes from a blues song by Delbert McClinton. An apt way to think about the problem.