Your project will involve creating a webpage where you visualize one or more datasets in order to tell a story about or make a case for something in your area of policy interest. In order to do this you will need to select one or more datasets and visualizations. The idea behind this exercise is not to develop a vision for product (before you even have any users / user stories), but to start to wrap your head around what might be possible in the scope of this project and to start thinking about datasets that interest you.
http://data.gov is a good place to start, but definitely spend some time surfing around elsewhere for datasets of interest. Depending on the expertise on your team and your level of comfort with different data formats, it may be easiest to look for data that is either in a simple JSON structure or a CSV file. data.fivethirtyeight.com is another place with datasets that may be of interest to some of you.
You may also consider data that has been exposed via an API (we'll discuss these in class), however it may take a little more effort to get data out of an API compared to pre-prepared datasets.
If you're particularly ambitious, you may be able to scrape information off of a webpage and create your own dataset if it doesn't exist. This may require some extra work but could be worth the effort.
To visualize the data you've selected, we'll be using Data Driven Documents in Javascript (D3JS). Lets harness the power of D3 and aim for something beyond a simple line chart or bar chart that you might build in excel. For example, if I wanted to visualize federal spending, I may consider using a treemap chart like this one to visualize the spending in different categories.
You can find example D3 visualizations at the following places, but I'd also encourage you to google around. They're all over the internet!
- https://d3js.org/
- https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery
- http://christopheviau.com/d3list/gallery.html
- https://github.com/d3/d3/wiki/Gallery
In this course you will be asked to create your own D3 visualization, but with the help of ChatGPT! We will use example visualizations, and learn enough code to tweak it to suit the needs of your dataset. You will also manipulate the data in your dataset to fit the format that the visualization requires.
This graphic by FT Visual Journalism team is a good starting point if you're not sure what type of visulization you need.
This is very much an exercise in brainstorming and exploration. You're not locking yourself into a dataset, but for the purposes of this exercise select one and explain why it might be a good match for the data you're trying to visualize.
The end goal will be to take the example visualization and manipulate it to fit the needs of your data. Take a glance at how the data is laid out in the example visualization you've selected. Start thinking through what skills you might need in order to get the data in the dataset you have selected to fit a format the visualization requires.
Here are some examples of projects from previous years. I expect that the projects from this year will be a little more polished since you will have much more time than students in the first year of the course did due to changes in the structure of the course. I will also be asking you to think a little harder about telling a coherent narrative with a visualization that makes sense for your particular dataset. Still, looking at previous projects might give you some ideas for your own.
2017 examples
2018 examples
- A1 - Econ Development - https://adm448.github.io/econdev/
- A2 - Energy Group - https://hpeyronnin.github.io/our-website/
- A3 - Criminal Justice - https://jaw547.github.io/a3-criminal-justice/
- A4 - Flight Delays - https://erinstpeter.github.io/A4-flight-delays/
- B1 - Hate Crimes - https://joshfergs.github.io/group-project-website/
- B2 - Economics - https://conorsanchez.github.io/moneybegetsmoremoney-anddebt/
- B3 - Fake News - https://oliver-backes.github.io/our-website/
- B4 - Cyber Attacks - https://irenesolaiman.github.io/b4-project/
2020 examples
- A1 - Digital Government - website, github
- A2 - Unpacking Foreign Influence & Disinformation on Twitter - website, github
- A3 - Visualizing Learning Across Pakistan - website, github
- A4 - Socialism in the Media - website, github
- B1 - (EV)olve Boston [about Electric Cars] - website, github
- B2 - The Rise of the Far Right - website, github
- B3 - Digital Africa - website, github
- B4 - Maps, Measles and Media - website, github
2021 examples
2022 examples
| Group | URL |
|---|---|
| A1: NFTs | https://code4policy.github.io/code4policy-nfts/ |
| A2: International Covid Aid | https://code4policy.github.io/covid-aid-impact/ |
| A3: Gender Inequality | https://danmek.github.io/Gender-Equity-4-Policy/ |
| A4: Game of Thrones | https://code4policy.github.io/GoT-Universe/ |
| B1: Internet Access Gender Gap | https://code4policy.github.io/code4policy-b1_internet_access/ |
| B2: Twitter Usage of World Leaders | https://whotweetswhat.works/ |
| B3: Carbon Emmissions | https://code4policy.github.io/Final_Project_Carbon_emission/ |
| B4: North Korea Missiles | https://eklung05.github.io/Missile-Visualization/ |
Do some exploration and fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdl75yAkoRPH604lO6ADuVZDw1iscTMgPn_lbIWs1qM-vAfiA/viewform?usp=pp_url&entry.155702682=2023 Leave a note in #section_a or #section_b slack channel with an idea for a dataset and/or visualization that you have researched.