This design exercise has you create visualizations from the new census data set. You will turn it in on Canvas as Design Exercise 3: Census (aggregations) (due Fri, Nov 13).

This is the second week of Module 3: Principles and Formalism. We’ll focus on perception and color. These are both huge topics, but we’ll try to get the highlights. In both cases, understanding the basic science is useful (and something I think is just “good general knowledge”). There is also Content Survey 3: Principles and Formalism and Design Warmup 3: Working with Census Data - both designed to connect to the topics (especially color).

I read the survey responses carefully and would like to respond in three ways: First, I would like to apologize for a framing (both in survey questions and class discussion) that some read in negative ways. Second, I would like to clarify some things that were misinterpreted. Third, I am making some changes to address some of the issues raised.

The goal of this Design Warmup is to get you working with the (new) census data set that you will use in Design Exercise 3, and to practice two things from this module: choosing appropriate aggregations, and choosing appropriate color scales. You will turn this assignment in on Canvas: Design Warmup 3: Working with Census Data (due Sat, Nov 07). Prepare your answers offline, ahead of time.

This page explains the feedback for Design Warmup 2: Make my visualizations. Your feedback is a comment on your Canvas submission. For each item it gives the assessment, any codes, and comments, then an overall comment, the score, and the grade.

We took extra time in grading Design Exercise 1 in order to be careful to provide consistent scores. We built tools that allowed us to assess the consistency of grading that revealed problems. I worked with Claude to arbitrate among the inconsistencies and provide better feedback.

This page explains the feedback for Design Exercise 1: Sketches and Questions. Your feedback is a comment on your Canvas submission. For each item it gives the assessment, any codes, and comments, then an overall comment, the score, and the grade.

This is an AI generated rubric used by the AI grader for the arbitration/validation check of Design Exercise 1: Sketching Solutions to Real Data Problems

This week we’ll start Module 3: Principles and Formalism. You might be wrapping up Design Exercise 2: Stories from Life Expectancy before the cutoff (hopefully using the feedback from the critique exercise). But we’ll be moving on to talking about Evaluation, Perception, Cognition, and Empirical Studies. There is a Seek and Find and a Reading survey due at the end of the week.

Update 10/26: DE2 re-submissions no longer need to include the whole assignment. Answer only the questions you changed, and leave the rest blank. See Resubmitting for the details.

If you turn in Design Exercise 2: Stories from Life Expectancy on time, you can take part in a feedback exercise: you write critiques of classmates’ designs, and you receive critiques of your own. You can earn up to 2 points for useful critiques, and the feedback you get may help you improve your assignment before you re-submit.