Design Exercise

For this design exercise, you get to fix your submission for DE06: One Data Set, Four Stories (Census Data Edition) and submit it again.

In class, we will try to work a bit on our skills as “designers” (in the sense of graphic design). Design skills are useful beyond visualization - you will probably need to make presentation slides, posters, web pages, business cards (OK, maybe that’s archaic), … So I wanted to take some time in class so we can work on our skills (yes - me too).

I used to call this “Design School in a Day” - except that it isn’t just a day (it will be a day of class, and a week of “homework”), and it’s hard to glorify this as a “school”.

For Design Exercise 11 and 12, we ask you to pick 4 “questions” or “stories” to tell from the ATUS data (that you’ve been working with for the past few weeks). For one of these stories, you will submit an “alternate” design (hence, 5 visualizations).

For Design Exercise 11, you turn in a “draft” - saying what questions/stories you intend to make visualizations for, and drafts of those visualizations. For Design Exercise 12, you turn in a set of “final” visualizations, with rationales.

Unlike last week, when all the visualizations were exploratory, here they are meant to be “final” - they should stand alone (with good labels and captions). You are asked to turn in a “rationale” (why you think it is effective, what you think it shows), but the visualization should “work” without it.

You will turn this assignment in using the Canvas survey Design Exercise 10: My Questions - Your Questions (due Fri, Nov 08). While the assignment is due on Friday, November 8th, we will accept assignments until Monday, November 11th without penalty.

This is the first assignment in a series of design exercises where you will work with the ATUS Data for 765-24.

The goals for this assignment are for you to (1) get some experience with the data set, (2) to practice making visualizations from it, (3) to do some exploratory visualization from it, and to (4) think about some of the issues particular to this data set.

If you haven’t already done so, I recommend reading the ATUS Data for 765-24 page to get started. I also recommend that you look through A Quick EDA Example with the ATUS Data (from 2022) - this is an example of me playing with the data sets from 2 years ago (which were different).

This page has the rubrics (evaluation criteria) for Design Exercises 4-7.

To expedite feedback, some common things are given as codes. We use codes to tell you about good and back things we see in your visualization (it is feedback). For an explanation of how we grade, see Design Exercise Rubrics 04,05,06,07. If we point out problems with a code (as feedback) it is to help you learn and improve - it doesn’t always mean that it hurts your great.

You should look through the codes to get a sense of common problems (so you can avoid them) or common positives (so you can try to achieve them).

In this design exercise, you will critique other students’ designs from DE06: One Data Set, Four Stories (Census Data Edition). This will give you practice at doing critique, and provide feedback to your peers (you will receive the feedback on your designs).

Design Exercise 6 asks that you make 4 visualizations, each telling a different story, from the Census Data data set. This assignment extends DE05: Stories from Data (EDA).

In this design exercise, we’ll continue working with the Census Data and make more visualizations. The idea is to try to “tell stories” with the data (illustrate interesting things). The problem is, we also need to identify the stories that are worth telling, which means we need to do some exploring. So part of this assignment is to try to do “Exploratory Data Analysis” where we make pictures that suggest what the interesting stories are.

In this assignment, you will make some visualizations from the Census Data. Actual visualizations based on data (unlike last time when we asked you to sketch). You will turn your assignment in using the Canvas survey Design Exercise 04: Pictures from Data (due Fri, Sep 27)

Design Exercise 3 will ask you to consider what visualizations to make to answer questions. We will continue to work with the Census Data.

This assignment will ask you to think more about the Census Data data set. The goal is to think about how questions and visualizations connect, and to start coming up with visualizations that answer questions.

Mechanics

This exercise will be turned in as a Canvas Survey: Design Exercise 03: Pictures and Questions. Most questions ask you to upload a file (a separate file for each question). You should be able to upload just about any image.

In our first design exercise (it is DE02 because it is in the second week), we will look at our data set and begin to think about why to visualize it. We’ll also practice critique.