Week 4 (Mon, Sep 25-Fri, Sep 29) – Encodings
- Mon, Sep 25 : Class: Encodings
- Wed, Sep 27 : Class (ICE): Redesign
- Fri, Sep 29 : Class: DCHelp & Vis Practice
- Reading: Week 4 – Encodings
- Discussion 4: Encodings (first post due 09/26)
- Seek and Find 4: Name that Encoding! (and change it) (due 09/29)
- Design Challenge : DC1 – Sketches (due 10/01)
This past week we looked at abstraction – of both data and task – as a way to analyze visualizations, and as a way to analyze problems to try to map them to visualizations. We also played with Tableau a little bit, both as a way to show how abstraction to encoding mappings can work, but also to see it as a tool you might want to try to use for DC1. On Friday, you had the opportunity to bring your own data set for DC1.
This coming week, we’ll look at encodings more carefully. We’ve already been talking about them, but in the readings and class discussions we’ll try to dig a little deeper into what makes for a good encoding, what choices are available for encodings, and why we might want to prefer one encoding over another. In Wednesday’s class, we’ll try another in-class design exercise (bring color pencils/pens).
For this week, Friday is not optional – we’ll use it as a way to talk about Visualization research. And in particular my visualization research (I’ll use it as a chance to plan my talk at the Vis conference the next week).
The following week (October 2-6), there are no class meetings – but everything else will happen (Reading, Discussion, Seek and Find, Design Assignment).
Learning Goals (for this week)
- Appreciate encodings as the building blocks of visualizations, and see how they are put together to make visualizations.
- Know the range of different encoding choices (the visual variables)
- Have a sense of what each visual variable is/is not good for
- Understand how visualizations can be assembled from (and analyzed into) encoding choices.
- Assess standard designs in terms of their encodings and data abstractions
- Appreciate the need for ways to make good choices about encodings
- (probably not time to get to it) See how glyph design is a good testbed for putting encodings together.
