by Mike Gleicher on February 10, 2017
This past week, we talked about evaluation. Although, in class, we spent more time on a specific kind of evaluation (design critique). We’ll come back to talking about experiments (if not this week then next).
For this week (Monday February 13 – Friday February 17th), we’ll be doing two things: our “Design School” and discussing abstraction. Be aware that there are Design School assignments for Tuesday (bring things to class on Wednesday, February 15th). You should know about everything for the week since it’s all on the schedule, and you should be used to the weekly rhythm (readings and discussion starts on Monday, seek and find on Friday).
- Monday, February 13 – We’ll have a lecture/class on Abstraction. We’ll do some in-class exercises to understand what are the abstractions in some visualizations. This will work a lot better if you’ve read the Munzner chapters, and then at least looked at some visualizations as examples to think about the abstractions in them.
- Wednesday, February 15 – We’ll have a lecture / in-class critique exercise about visual design (our “Design School in a Day”).
- Friday, February 17 – No required class. I will have office hours.
The assignments for this week:
- Reading 5 – the main part is due before class on Monday 2/13
- Discussion 5 – everyone has to play “name that encoding” for 2-3 visualizations. Have your first one by Monday 2/13. And remember, you need to make at least comments on other people’s postings!
- Design School Part 3 (Redesign) – you must upload your work (before and after, 2 seperate PDFs) to Canvas on Tuesday 2/14.
- Design School in-class critiques – you must bring your work (printed out on paper) to class on Wednesday 2/15.
- Seek and Find 5 – is related to the design school. The content is a little different than other seek and finds.
by Mike Gleicher on February 10, 2017
We are aware that some people had some problems posting to Canvas over the past few days.
Chih-Ching has worked with Canvas support, and we believe that the problem has been fixed. If you’re still having problems, let us know.
We understand that this might mean some of you delayed you assignments this week. Canvas might still tell you your assignments are late, but we’ll take the problems into account when assigning scores.
by Mike Gleicher on February 9, 2017
I said this in class, but I never posted anything about it…
Tableau is data visualization software that makes it fast to put together charts and diagrams from data (especially if what you want is a standard chart type). It is particularly good for trying out different views of data.
Tableau has generously donated licenses to their software for use in this class.
We have enough keys such that everyone in class can have one if they want. If you want a key, contact Chih-Ching (for now, we might find a better way to distribute keys in the future).
We will take time in class (on March 1st) to look at Tableau. It is a really useful tool for Design Challenge 1 (which will be announced soon).
by Mike Gleicher on February 8, 2017
by Chih-Ching Chang on February 8, 2017
We upload 3 discussion examples in box.
- Discussion21-Uncertainty.html is from class in 2015.
- Dis2-Ex1.html is a good example of initial post that summarized the readings well.
- Dis2-Ex2.html is a good example of discussion thread. They have their own thoughts and discussed continuously about why someone agreed or disagreed with the reading or other students’ ideas.
P.S. The format looks terrible in box preview.
by Mike Gleicher on February 7, 2017
I have put the lecture slides into a folder on box:
https://uwmadison.box.com/s/7qkmmldle97c9m6g5arhryvsq79y3ae7
No promises these are useful – they are meant as a visual aid for the presentation. And I don’t always follow the deck – I skip things, go in different order, …
I’ll keep adding to this directory. In the future, I will try to put things up ahead of lecture. For Wednesday, the slides will be the ones for today (lecture 7) that we didn’t get to.
by Mike Gleicher on February 5, 2017
Reading: (due before class on Feb 20) Reading 6 Encodings
Discussion (initial posting due on Feb 20): LINK TO CANVAS
Encodings provide the building blocks for visualizations. In the discussion, I want you to both consider what these building blocks are, and how they are assembled into more complex visualizations.
Using spatial position as an encoding is special, which is why Munzner devotes a whole chapter (and more) to it. There is actually a separate Chapter in Ware about it as well.
I want everyone to make (at least) three initial postings. We’ll use one discussion thread for all of them. Please do each of these as a seperate posting (i.e., a thread started – not in response to another posting).
- Describe the key ideas from the encoding readings. What are the basic encodings, and how does this relate to concepts like “visual channels”? How do we combine encodings to make visualizations? How do we choose encodings? (this is the one due for Feb 20)
- Give an examples of appropriate and inappropriate encoding choices. For different encodings, what might it be good or bad for?
- Take a complex visualization (using something from a previous seek and find is good): break it down into its encodings. Which visual channels are used, and what are they used for? (a good discussion topic: are these encodings good).
Part 3 is very similar to Seek and Find 6. You can think of it as a way to practice before showing an analysis to the whole class. Please don’t use an example from your discussion for your seek and find.
As always, you are required to have 2 additional “discussion” postings (postings made in response to something someone else said). And given the new, regular schedule, you should have a first posting (Question 1) on Monday, Feb 20, and the other 5 on or before Friday (Feb 24) – although the discussion will remain open until Friday Feb 27th so you can continue to discuss, or you can put in late postings.
by Mike Gleicher on February 5, 2017
Due Date: Monday, March 13th, preferably before class (assignment)
So far, we have focused on discussing static visualizations. Now, we’ll start to talk about interaction. But, in order to do so, we’ll need to get some vocabulary to describe the many different types of interactions that are useful in Vis.
Heer and Schneiderman (web version) give a nice start. The draft of Munzner’s book had a differently nice one, but it got re-organized and spread out in the final book (into Chapters 11-13). We’ll save Chapter 13 for later.
- Heer and Schneiderman. Interactive Dynamics for Visual Analysis.
The “official” version was in the Communications of the ACM (CACM). (link to PDF)
You can use the official link if you are on campus or use the library’s proxy server
The “ACM Queue” (a magazine published by ACM) has an online version.
- Munzner, Chapter 11 (link)
- Munzner, Chapter 12 (link) – note this isn’t as specific to interaction, but I’m not sure where else it fits into the class.
Reading about interaction is just a start. Really, the best thing to do is to try out lots of interactions and get a sense of what they do and not do. So, for this reason, I am not going to load up on readings. Go play with some interactive visualizations and see how they help address visualization challenges.
But, as an optional reading, I recommend:
-
Lam, H. (2008). A Framework of Interaction Costs in Information Visualization. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 14(6), 1149–1156. http://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2008.109. (pdf link to Heidi’s page)
because it gets at the downsides of using interaction. I will be using this to frame the lecture in class.
by Mike Gleicher on February 5, 2017
Due: Friday, February 24
link to Canvas
This is back to the “usual” seek and find, where you need to find a visualization (remember the ground rules… provide a picture and a link, describe what it is, … – seek and find 1 has the instructions).
This time, I want you to find a visualization and describe/critique its encoding. Start by describing the correct abstraction of the data and task (just like in Assignment 5), and then describe the encodings used to map that data into the visualization. Critique the encoding. Then offer 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 can sketch it, great, but if not just describe it. And compare it to the original.
by Mike Gleicher on February 4, 2017
I have a post from the 2015 version of class called “How to do Visualization” – I should have explicitly asked you to read it.
How to do Visualization (from the 2015 Course Web)
It probably isn’t news to you now – it’s pretty much what I’ve been saying in the class so far. But it might be the only place the big picture I am trying to convey in class is written down.
I bring this up now, since I will mention this posting in class Monday (I am re-using some old slides). It’s a quick read.