Note: this page is for the course staff to “stage” the discussion prompts before putting them on Canvas. It really isn’t for students.

Seek and Find 01: Bring me a visualization!

For our first seek and find, we have two learning goals:

1. We want to work out the mechanics of seek and find assignments to make sure everyone can properly find visualizations and post them for others to see.
2. We you to be aware of the visualizations that you encounter in your life.

You may want to review the Seek and Find (The seek and find ground rules).

For week 1, you can pick any data visualization - but pick one that you encountered recently. Either something from your day to day life, your research, your hobbies, …

The idea here is to see how common visualizations are in the world. My guess is you’ve seen a lot of them in the past week. Bring us one of them. It should be something you find interesting, and would have encountered. You shouldn’t have to look hard to find one. But, you might want to look a little bit for an interesting one.

In your description, tell us where you encountered it, why you think its a data visualization, and why you were interested in it. Don’t worry about judging it for now.

When you embed your image into your canvas posting (see instructions on Tips on Using Canvas (Uploading Images to Canvas)) please make sure that it isn’t set to be too big.

After you’ve uploaded your image and made your post, have a look at what other people have posted!

Remember, discussion (beyond the initial posts) is optional, but encouraged and rewarded.

(warning: if you are not in a “discussion group” do not post - it will get lost in Canvas - send a message to the course staff and we’ll fix it. this should only happen if you’ve added the class after we last adjusted the groups)

Seek and Find 02: Why Visualize That?

For this seek and find, you need to find a visualization for which you can say why this visualization was made. What is the task that required a visualization? Why couldn’t this have been just done with a few numbers or a little text? Why did the designer bother to make a visual representation?

Include a picture of the visualization, a link to it in context (if there is one), a brief description of what the visualization is, and an explanation of why it needed to be a visualization (those 3 questions in the previous paragraph are a good start).

Notice that the 3 questions don’t ask you to critique the visualization. If you want to practice critique (optional), at the end, try to critique some aspect of the visualization. Follow the styled format we discussed in class (from the Discussing Design book). Pick some specific aspect (as an easy place to start).

Remember the Seek and Finds Seek and Find (The seek and find ground rules).

Seek and Find 03: Task and Data Abstractions

For this seek and find, you need to find a visualization (subject to the usual rules) and describe it abstractly. You might want to choose a visualization for which describing it in terms of abstractions isn’t too hard (but hard enough).

Of course, you need to include the visualization (a picture of the visualization, a link to it in context (if there is one), a brief description of what the visualization is).

In the description, please:

• Describe the data used to make the visualization. Try to describe it both specifically, but also in terms of the data abstractions. What are the key variables, and what are their properties?
• Describe the task you think the viewer is supposed to do with the visualization. There may be many tasks, but pick what you think one or two of the main ones are. Try to describe the task both specifically and abstractly.

The tasks for a visualization aren’t always obvious - either to the viewer or the designer. And there are many ways to describe tasks. Part of this exercise is for you to get an appreciation for the challenges of task identification and description.

Data and data abstraction is usually clearer. That part should be easy. If you’re stuck on task, start by writing down what you think the viewer is trying to do specifically, and then try to fit into one of the frameworks you read about (such as the one in Munzner, or the 5Ws and H (either version)).

One tricky thing: when we see a visualization, we don’t know what the designer was intending for us to do with it - so we don’t necessarily know the task it was designed for. So, in an exercise like this we are either (1) looking at the tasks that are facilitated by the visualization or (2) thinking of tasks we’d like to do with the data/visualization (but may not be able to). Either of these is OK - we’re not always saying that a visualization succeeds at enabling the task.

Remember the Seek and Finds Seek and Find (The seek and find ground rules).

Seek and Find 04: Encodings

For this seek and find, you need to find a visualization (subject to the usual rules). You need to identify the data (and describe it abstractly). And then you need to describe how the data is encoded visually - what variables are mapped to what visual channels.

So, in the description, please:

• Describe the data used to make the visualization. Try to describe it both specifically, but also in terms of the data abstractions. What are the key variables, and what are their properties?
• Describe the encodings used to map the data to visual channels. Be as specific as you can.

For discussion, you can:

• Comment on whether you agree with the original description.
• Describe the tasks the visualization might be effective for, at different levels of abstraction/composition (in class I differentiated the two - you can pick either one).
• Suggest an alternative encoding. It’s OK if the one you pick isn’t as good as the original, especially if the original is good – but it should be plausible. If you want to sketch it, great (and include a second picture), but otherwise a description is fine.

We are not necessarily asking for a critique of the encodings. We’ll learn more about how to evaluate encodings when we discuss perception. However, you should be able to assess (and choose) encodings that are appropriate for the data type.

Week 5: How did they do that? (Implementation)

Pick a visualization on the web that makes you think “how did they do that?” and try to see if you can figure out what the underlying technologies are and what choices would be appropriate if you were going to try to make it.

In general, we’ve been trying to think about visualizations without considering the implementation. But now, let’s consider the implementation.

When you look at an impressive visualization, can you figure out how the authors made it? Can you at least think about what tools would be appropriate (or not)?

It is more important to think about what tools would have been appropriate to make the visualization than it is to actually figure out what the author used.

You can make the “how did they do that” easier by picking a visualization from a tutorial or visualization web page (like an example from the D3 gallery) – in which case, the author will tell you what tools are being used. But, the spirit of this assignment is to look for visualizations “in the wild” and see that it isn’t always so easy to figure out the implementation details.

More importantly, even if you know that it was done with a specific tool (e.g., D3, drawn by hand in Illustrator), describe why this was (or wasn’t) an appropriate choice. What other implementations could you have used?

Week 6: Too Much Stuff (scalability)

In this seek and find, you need to find an example of something that shows a lot of data – using (at least) one of the techniques we talked about in class for dealing with “too much stuff.” In your description, be clear about why you think there’s “a lot of data” and what approach the visualization uses to address that scalability challenge. Connect to the scalability strategies discussed in class. Is the approach effective?

Week 7: Comparisons or High Dimensions

In this seek and find, you have a choice, based on either on the original intent for the week (and the readings) or what we really spoke about in lecture.

Find a visualization for:

1. Choose a visualization that shows high dimensional data. In the writeup, explain what approach is used to address the dimensionality.

2. Choose a visualization that provides a comparison. Describe how it fits into the comparison framework from the “considerations of comparison” paper (scalability challenge, scalability strategy, comparative design).

Week 8: Review (was Why/Why Not)

This week’s seek and find is a bit of a review…

Find some visualization from a past seek and find - that was posted by someone else!

(you should be able to revisit the past discussions - just not post to them)

Pick some past visualization, and say something about how the visualization connects to (one or more) of the principles from either the Ware or Card, Mackinlay and Schneiderman reading. (we will discuss these in class).

As an experiment, we will not be dividing this seek and find into groups.