Design Exercise 7-1: Interaction

in Design Exercises (List Page)

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to have students implement interactive visualizations in class. It’s too hard to implement something in a hurry if you aren’t already familiar with the tools. Therefore, in this assignment we’ll try a mix of observation and “low-fidelity prototyping”. As part of this, you’ll get to experience what it takes to make a video presentation.

Note: this module has three (small) Design Exercises. This is the first of three.

This design exercise will be turned in as Design Exercise 7-1: Interaction (due Fri, Dec 12). There is a hard cutoff of Monday, December 15th for late assignments.

Design an Interactive Visualization

In this design exercise, we’ll consider using interaction with the Flights Data (as in DE5 and DE6).

You can assume you have the complete data set (all months, multiple years, more than just 100 airports).

Choose some “question” (task) that would be difficult to address with a static visualization - but where interaction is likely to be helpful. It might be a case where the user focuses their interest on a question, or may want to look for more details. It might be a question that could have been answered with a static visualization (as in a prior assignment), but interaction would provide a better solution.

Some examples that come to mind…

  1. Compare different cities to determine which ones can be reached most reliably at different times of year. For example, if you are picking a city to hold a conference - you want it in a place that is easy to get to from lots of different places, and have those connections be robust.
  2. Compare different routes between a pair of cities at different times of year. For example, between Madison and Seattle, I might connect through Chicago or Denver, each one might have different delay patterns.
  3. Compare different airlines for different routes in terms of their delays.

Or, you can extend a question that you asked in DE5 or DE6 to help a viewer explore more data to examine the relevant historical trends.

Then, design an interactive visualization that supports the task / allows the viewer to explore answers to the question. We emphasize design - we do not expect you to implement anything. Or, to be more precise, your “prototype” implementation should be a sketch - some description that conveys they design (well enough that we can understand what you intended).

We ask you to document your design in two ways:

  • A static document (a PDF) - this should be a text description with pictures. Consider how to use sequences of images and images with annotations to explain interaction and animations.
  • A video (see below) - you will make a video of at most 5 minutes to explain your design.

We also ask two other questions that you should include in your PDF document:

  1. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Describe the challenges it provides that suggest interaction as a solution.
  2. Explain how the solution you proposes uses interaction to solve the problem. Consider how the costs of interactions compare with the benefits.

Document your design in a video

To explain your design, provide a video of up to 5 minutes. (we will not watch videos longer than 5 minutes)

Videos give you a chance to “fake” the interaction - for example by showing a sequence of screen shots or moving post-its on a whiteboard. You need to provide enough visuals and description (in audio) so that the viewer can use their imagination to see what is happening.

We understand that producing videos is hard. Part of the lesson here is for you to experience how hard it is. We will provide some tips on the mechanics of creating a recording (and delivering it), but we won’t give you much advice on how to make a great video. We will have appropriate expectations. Experiment and be creative.

Aim to convey your design. Not make great film art.

We imagine a sequence of “screen shots” - which might be sketches, or power point layouts, or … - with narration. Or a video of you drawing on a whiteboard sketching out the design (moving post-its is a great strategy). Your goal is to convey your idea enough that we can imagine what you are thinking.

We would much rather hear your voice in the video than some simulated text-to-speech voice. The authenticity adds a lot.

For tools to use to turn in video see Video Mechanics: How to Make Video For Class

What to turn in

  1. A single PDF file that clearly contains three parts:
    1. A description of the problem (that conveys why it is worthy of an interactive solution)
    2. A description of the solution (that conveys how interaction is used)
    3. An explanation of the rationale for the design that explains how the interaction addresses the challenges of the problem.
  2. A video explaining how your design works. The video must be less than 5 minutes in length.
    1. A separate video page will discuss the mechanics of producing and turning in videos. But we prefer that you place videos in Mediaspace (Kaltura) and embed the video in the survey (there is a button in Canvas to embed media from Kaltura).
  3. There will be a separate response box to describe how you made things.

How will we grade this?

Your grade will be based on:

  1. How well do you describe a problem and why it needs interaction.
  2. How well you justify that your solution uses interaction effectively to solve the problem.
  3. How well your design represents choices that are likely to be effective were the design to be implemented. We will try to use our imagination (based on the description and video) to assess what your design is.
  4. How well your design is presented.
  5. For the video, we care most that you try to produce a video. We will be very understanding - we appreciate how hard it is. We want to see that you tried to produce a video, and explored some of the options. It is important to do something for the video - even if you end up relying on the PDF document to do most of the work conveying the design.

We will reward quality and creativity in choices of problem, design, and presentation.