Design Exercise 4: Critiques and Experiments

This design exercise has two distinct parts. Both are really important as part of bigger multi-phase things, so it is important that you complete them on time.

1. You must provide critiques to your classmates on their DE3 designs.
2. You must at least try to use Tableau and make some visualization.

You will turn this in on Canvas as DE04: Critiques and Experiments (due Tue, Oct 11). Note: prepare your answers off line and then copy them into the boxes. You will also upload a picture to Canvas (of your work with Tableau).

The deadline for this is strict: if we don’t get your critiques on time, we cannot return them to the designers so they can use them to improve things. You need to try Tableau so you can be ready to use it for the next assignment.

All of these will be turned in as a single Canvas “Quiz” (graded survey). There will be type-in boxes for the critiques (we recommend preparing your answers offline), and you will be required to upload a picture created with Tableau. Canvas will give you a point for completing the assignment (so we can track that you are completing assignments - we’ll take away the point if we find you didn’t actually turn in a viable assignment). Evaluation (for a grade) will happen separately (if you don’t turn things in on time, we may not be able to grade it).

Part 1 - Critiques

Last week, you (and every student in class) turned in initial designs for their response to the “Aid Data” questions. This week, we’ll try to give each other feedback so that we can improve them (and practice doing critique). Each student is required to critique 2 other students, and do 2 designs (so you need to write 4 critiques).

How this works: (assuming you turned in DE3 on time - if you didn’t no one can critique you, and you won’t get to critique someone else) you will be assigned a number between 1 and N (where N is the number of students that turned in assignments). Expect to get an email from Keaton (the TA) with your number in it. If you haven’t gotten it by end of day on Oct 6, ping him.

You need to critique 2 other students per question. For Question 1, you review the next 2. (use modular arithmetic if your number is close the end end). For Question 2, you review the previous 2 (use modular arithmetic). So, if your number is 17, you review 18 and 19 for Question 1 and 16 and 15 for Question 2. If your number is 2, your review 3 and 4 for Question 1 and 1 and N (the highest numbered assignment) for Question 2.

All designs will be placed in folders DE3-Question1 and DE3-Question2 on Canvas. You can find the ones you are supposed to critique there.

You will be graded on the quality of the critique. But, more importantly, this is a chance to help out your classmate: give them good critique so they can learn and improve their designs! Note: your grade is the quality of your critique, not the quality of the design you are critiquing!

Note: your “critique” of a design may be multiple critiques. That is, you might pick multiple aspects to comment on (preferably, following the “If Objective, For Aspect, Principle, Altenatives” format.) But try to follow the principles of good critique: each should be about a specific aspect that can be improved.

For “extra credit” (and to help more of your classmates) you can critique a third design (or even 4th). If you choose to do this, do design n+3 for Question 1 and n-3 for Question 2. The handin form has questions so you can turn in up to 3 critiques for each question. Note: you only get extra credit if all of the critiques are good. (the critique is good - even if the design is not)

You will get one “grade” for the “Aid Data Assignments” (spread over design exercise 3, 4 and 5). This will factor in the quality of your initial designs (DE3), the quality of your critiques (DE4 - note this is about what you write, not about the designs you are critiquing), and the quality of your final design (you get to update your DE3 based on the feedback you will get from someone else doing DE4).

Part 2 - Try Tableau

The assignment here is simple. We want you to at least try to use Tableau (see Tableau). Next week we will actually ask you to do things with it. But for this week, it is enough for you to just play with it a little:

1. make sure you can either log in (to the online site) or install (the desktop version).
2. make sure you can load in a data set and look at it
3. try to make a picture from some data set. get used to the idea of how you drag and drop to build visualizations

All you need to do is upload some picture (a screen shot or a saved picture) that you made. If it’s something that comes from a tutorial you are doing, OK. It doesn’t have to be a great visualization.