The last full week of the semester!

In some ways, this is a normal week. We have a big topic (graphs - in the sense of networks, not in the sense of “line graph”). But, since you’re probably deep into the project, we’ll adjust expectations accordingly.

To give you more time to focus on the project, we won’t have an online discussion this week. Instead, use this as an opportunity to contribute to the Project Theme Discussions. Please be careful though: join a group before posting (if you post before joining a group, it goes into a “no-mans-land” where only people who haven’t joined a group can see it).

The week after Thanksgiving… we can sortof get back to a normal schedule.

This topic for this week is Evaluation. I’ll talk about it in lecture on Monday. The readings are important. You can read them before lecture or after (I’ll go through the main points - it’s stuff you will need to see more than once). The readings are very reduced for the project. But, there will be a “Design Excercise” related to both the project and the readings for the following week.

For Wednesday’s lecture, the topic is “the random stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.” It might be more on evaluation. I may talk about 3D and animation - because there is simply no other day to talk about them, and I feel a need to talk about them. Or maybe I’ll talk about the SciVis topics that we simply don’t get time to cover in class, but I feel must be at least mentioned in a Vis class.

In terms of the project: there is a “check in” this week - it’s officially due on Tuesday, but it is OK if you turn it in before Friday Dec 2. That will give you more time to make progress. Note: only one member per team needs to fill out the form, but all team members should do the survey to indicate who is doing the form for them.

It’s Thanksgiving week. The schedule is changed a little. I hope everyone has a good holiday.

This week we have a big topic: color. It seems so central. It seems so basic. But it turns out to be remarkably complex (and important). We can only scratch the surface. But, the amount we’ll do is also constrained by its Thanksgiving week, and the course project is starting (and I want students to focus on that).

This week was supposed to be color week. We’ll put that off so we can do things that are timely and relevant to the Design Exercise / Projects: we’ll talk about design, and you’ll read about uncertainty. And in class, we’ll do some brainstorming about projects and help people find partners and choose topics.

This week we’ll dig into human perception as an important foundation for visualization. We’ll also continue the Time Usage Survey Design Exercise.

This will be a non-standard week because of the Design Exercise: the Tuesday deadline to turn in drafts is strict, and the normal Friday activities will be replaced by doing critiques.

This week, we will turn our attention to interaction (at least in terms of the course content). We are also beginning the first phase of the “time usage survey project” (less a project than a series of design exercises).