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Thanks to everyone who took the DE12 post-mortem survey. It was quite interesting for me. It gives me a lot of food for thought on how to improve things - even though it is too late to make changes for this year.

(although, it does re-assure me that some of my last minute changes were good)

If you’re curious, here are the survey results (and my takeaways)…

Critiques

About giving critiques…

We are getting near the end of the semester, here is the plan for what we are doing. The big thing is the announcement of DE15: DE6 Do-Over. Everything else, you can probably guess.

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”.

You have gotten (or will get very soon) your grade for DE6. It will be in a separate Canvas column.

We graded it on an A-F scale. Your grade is given as the “GPA number” (4=A, 3.5=AB, 3=B, 0=F). We do this to make it easier for later averaging. And so that we can divide things a little more finely than the “whole half-grade steps.”

You can convert things to a letter grade by rounding (e.g., 3.7 rounds to 3.5, which is an AB). But you should also interpret it as “3.7 is an AB, but really close to the border”. Being close is significant because of how it might be combined with other assignments later, but also so you know with a little bit of fixing, it could have been an A.

A mix of things inter-related things. Advice for DE12, DE6 grades, future assignments, etc.

DE12 is due Friday, with no penalty if you turn things in by Monday (November 25th).

Some advice (from questions after class, and DE6 grading)…

1. The assignment says “If all of your visualizations are bar charts …” - we do value variety, but we value effectiveness more. If it really is the case that your stories are all told best with the same chart design, then you might have 4 bar charts or scatterplots or … At least your alternate could be different (which might reinforce why the bar chart is the best choice).

   Read more…

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).

For the Design Exercises 9-12, we are giving students the opportunity to be part of a collaborative learning opportunity. Students must opt-in: by agreeing to be part of option, students will be held responsible for strict deadlines twice a week. In return, they will receive the ability to work in a group to discuss their assignments (asynchronously).

Note: even if you want to opt out (i.e., not opt-in) you must complete CLO Survey: Opt in or out to the Collaborative Learning Opportunity - it does count as a class survey. You must register your choice by 2pm (an hour after class) on Monday, October 28th.

Design Challenge 2 (or maybe, better described as “Data Challenge 2”) will be a grouping of assignments (Design Exercises) we will do over the next few weeks. The idea is we will use a single data set (the American Time Usage Survey - see ATUS Data for 765-24) for a number of exercises involving exploring data, identifying questions, designing visualizations, and critiquing visualizations.

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).

Canvas isn’t always great about how it handles multiple file uploads - especially around deadlines. So a few bits of caution for turning in assignments.

You should check that your submissions have been properly uploaded.