Design Exercises (List Page)

In this exercise, you will make visualizations using the data sets provided at A Tale of Two Data Sets. These visualizations are meant to be “exploratory” - we are asking you to create visualizations that might expose interesting stories (so you can make more focused visualizations that tell the specific stories in the future).

In this exercise, we will ask you to make some visualizations using the data sets on A Tale of Two Data Sets. The goal here is to give you some practice making visualizations and working with the data (you will do more work with it in subsequent assignments). A secondary goal is for you to think about appropriate uses of different visualizations types.

In this exercise, you will be making some initial looks at the two data sets we’ll be working with for the first weeks of class. We’ll ask you to think about the data and sketch some ideas. Note: we are not asking you to make visualizations using computer tools (we want you to sketch).

In this design exercise we give you a chance to critique some visualizations to practice your critique skills. We would like you to use the stylized form described in class and in the readings. Because we haven’t learned that many “principles” in class, use your intuitions - what does the visualization make easy for you to see (or not see)?

In this second design exercise, we’ll look at some visualizations and try to figure out why the designer chose the specific designs. The goal is to build intuitions about task and effectiveness in visualizations. You will turn in your answers to questions about the visualizations on Canvas as Design Exercise 1-2: Why These Charts? (due Fri, Sep 12).

In our first design exercise we’ll look at some different visualizations of the same data set and you’ll try to figure out what each one might be good for. The goal of this exercise is to build intuitions about task and effectiveness in visualizations. You will turn in your answers to questions about the visualizations on Canvas as Design Exercise 1-1: What can you see? (chart comparison) (due Fri, Sep 12)