Due 3.5 by 11:59pm
Adding a new line!
Visualizations offer different lenses on our data. As we saw when working with misleading visualizations, showing the same data in different ways can generate very different conclusions. This assignment will give you hands-on experience creating visualizations that let you view your data from different angles.
For this assignment, you will find a dataset that you find interesting and explore a central question about that data using three different visualizations. Note that you can either choose a question and visualizations on your own or remix an existing data story (see Extra Credit below for guidelines on the remix option). Make sure you cite your original data source(s) somewhere in your document.
Once you’ve found a dataset you wish to work with, you’ll create three visualizations, each with different designs (i.e., each visualization should use a unique set of channels, such as a scatterplot, line graph, and bubblechart). You will use these visualizations to tell a story that answers your central question. These visualizations can use whatever design techniques you'd like. However, I will be looking for the following elements in your story:
- Your story should stand alone as an independent piece. That is, you should create either a notebook or single webpage that contains your story and includes all relevant text and visualizations. If you create a notebook, please include any assignment text (e.g., describing the data, analyzing the visualizations) as markdown rather than inline comments.
- Your story should include at least three visualizations using noticeably different designs (e.g., more than just changing the color scheme in your scatterplots).
- At least one of your visualizations should be generated using Altair or D3. You can either build that visualization in-line (e.g., in a notebook) or by exporting the visualization and embedding it in your webpage. You can build the remaining visualizations using whatever tools you’d prefer, but they should reflect your own designs (e.g., not the Tableau defaults).
- Your story should describe your central questions and what each visualization tells you about that question. Visualizations should blend with the text of the story to support the presented arguments or explanations.
- Your data source should be described and cited somewhere in the piece. Note that not all data stories you find online will do this (however, it is good practice to provide transparency into your data whenever possible).
You will submit either a notebook, webpage, or a document with a link to your submission online. Note that if you embed your visualizations into a website, make sure to also submit your notebook and/or source code files containing the original source. You can use code from example galleries or other online sources in your visualizations, but you must cite your source for your code in your comments or document.
The rubric for this assignment is as follows:
- Data are described and cited: 1 pt
- Visualizations (3 pts each):
- Visualizations address the target question: 1 pts
- Visualizations are thoughtfully designed: 1 pts
- Visualizations are thoughtfully discussed: 1 pts
- -3pts if a visualization duplicates another (e.g., two identical scatterplots with different data).
Live Deployment (1pt): Deploy your story as part of a live web portfolio. Provide a link to that portfolio somewhere in your submission document.
View Coordination (2pts): Your visualizations will all relate to the same general set of ideas, often building on one another to steadily explain an idea or argument. To help clarify these arguments, design your visualizations to interact with one another using view coordination. That is, interacting with one visualization will cause a change in another. We will explore how to link views when we talk about interaction, but this notebook might help if you want to get a jump on this more advanced Altair work: https://infovis.fh-potsdam.de/tutorials/infovis3interaction.html
Telling a Story (3pts): Visualizations are often embedded in narrative pieces in journalism, education, and elsewhere to provide people with data to support a given argument or explanation. These visualizations are often static, but many times are interactive to support people in working with the data to build their own conclusions through the visualization. Such techniques are intended to increase a reader’s agency---their sense of control and autonomy---in understanding the material and, as a result, increase reader trust. Use your three visualizations to remix an existing data story (make sure to link the original story). The visualizations can reproduce the original visualizations used in the story, but at least one of the three visualizations should be different from those found in the original story.
Above and Beyond (3pts): Nothing extra to do here: these are points awarded at the graders' discretion for truly outstanding work.