This course includes a semester-long group project where you all will create your own data visualization. The core learning objective of the project is for you all to take design lessons, guidelines, and instiration from the topics we discuss throughout the semester and create an interesting and effective visualization.

Student should work in groups of size 4. Feel free to use Piazza or chat with classmates before/after class to meet students who have similar interests as you to form groups. Some lectures will end early for you to have specific times to do this also.

There are many sources of data, across a wide variety of potential topics and domains. Some websites with sources are listed below, but there are ceratinly more. Think about what topics interest you and spend some time finding data. It may or may not exist.

Regardless of your data or topic, I expect a high-quality visualization as the outcome of this project.

Milestones (M)

The following milestones (marked on the course schedule with Ms). Due dates are on the Canvas assignments and on the course schedule.

Milestone 0 – Team Formation

Grading: 0% of total project grade

Team name, team member (student) names, one or two sentence description of your topic/data. Each team member should submit this pdf to Canvas to complete milestone 1. If you do not have a team at this stage (and have tried Piazza posts to find shared interests, Pod assignment, etc.), please email your instructor and we will find you a team.

Milestone 1 – Project Topic and Goals

Grading: 10% of total project grade

1-2 page pdf listing project members, project topic, and data. The report should address:

  • What is the problem being addressed? Why would someone use your visualization?
  • Where is the data coming from and what are the data characteristics (How many attributes? What type? How many items? etc.)? Include a link if it’s available online.
  • Who would be interested in understanding more about this data?
  • What questions would these people want to ask, and how would you vis help them answer those questions?

We will attempt to get initial feedback to teams as quickly as possible. In some cases, we will recommend changing topic. If that occurs, we encourage the team to develop a new topic and submit a new topic document as soon as possible.

Make a pdf and submit it to Canvas. Only one team member needs to submit the pdf.

Milestone 2 – Midterm Design Review & Critique

Grading: 15% of total project grade

This is an opportunity for you to receive feedback about different design ideas that you are considering. This milestone consists of finding a 10-minute timeslot the week this milestone is due (not the day it is due) to meet with the instructor/TAs. Signup instructions are on the Canvas assignment page. During this meeting, please prepare a presentation (slides or just showing what’s on your screen, either one is fine) to show us the following information:

  • Show us your data
  • Mention the tasks or questions your users should be able to answer. Why would someone use this vis? What do you want them to be able to accomplish?
  • If you have a single design that you’re considering, show a few example views. These can include different filters, or aspects of the view that you’re considering. At this stage, it’s also ok to have multiple design ideas. If so, show us multiple. These can be hand-drawn sketches, or more high-fidelity design sketches if you want. This is an opportunity for your group to be creative and come up with alternatives that we can comment on to help guide your project. The less you show us here, the higher the chance of a poor outcome later. Remember, we can only give you feedback on what you show us.
  • Be ready to answer questions we may have and take notes on feedback. Be prepared that this feedback may change your project direction (a lot, or a little). 

Plan for a short presentation 3-4 minutes with the rest reserved for Q&A. No submission for this milestone. Your grade is based on how prepared you are for the meeting. How well have you thought through your design ideas? How well can you answer questions? 

Milestone 3 – System Demo

Grading: 50% of total project grade

Each team will meet with the instructor/TAs during this week for 15 minutes to demo your system. Note that this should be a running demo, not a presentation of screenshots. You will also submit (to Canvas) an updated 1-page overview document wit the following information:

  • Topic
  • Team member names
  • Screenshot of your visualization
  • Description of your problem and project overview (~1 paragraph). This could be repeated from your description in an earlier milestone, or updated if you have changed it.

You will also submit your project files at this point. Create a .zip with all the project files needed to run your project (e.g., Tableau StoryPoint file, website, data, etc.). Place your pdf overview document into this .zip as well.

Milestone 4 – Visualization Demo Video

Grading: 25% of total project grade

Create a 2-3 minute video that introduces the problem your visualization addresses and showcases the visualization at how it approaches that problem. During our final exam period, we will have a “Video Showcase” where each team presents its video and has a few minutes available to answer questions about it. Upload either a link to Canvas, or the video itself. Do NOT email the actual large video file. Use mp4 format on the video at least 720p.

Grading

The overall grade of your project is weighted per milestone (see milestones above). A bulk of this is the actual visualization and presentation of the visualization itself. The following questions and criterial will be important during that evaluation process.

  • Does the system (i.e., your visualizations) work? Does it read in the data and present visualizations of the data the way you want it to? Does it not crash?
  • Are the visualizations an effective representation of the data going beyond what one could ascertain simply by looking at the data files?
  • Do the visualizations support different analytical questions about the data and/or do they help the viewer better understand and gain insights about the data?
  • Are the visualization design choies appropriate and do they follow good datavis design principles?
  • Do your visualizations exhibit some creativity or visual interest beyond the simplest standard views?
  • Was your presentation/demonstration (final meeting) an effective illustration of your project and work?
  • Does your video illustrate your system well? Does it explain the problem and solution well enough so that a person unfamiliar with the project can appreciate your contribution?

The grade earned for the project will be a team grade, that is, all team members will earn the same score for the project. However, the professor reserves the right to adjust individual team member’s scores either upward or downward to support especially strong or weak performance and contributions to the group effort, as much as he can objectively determine. It is acknowledged that not all team members will bring the same skills to the group. It is each member’s responsibility, however, to make a significant contribution in whatever way that best matches his or her abilities. There is a Team Evaluation Form due on the the same day as M4 which all team members must fill out individually and submit to Canvas.

Data

As you’ve read serveral times, getting good data that can be used to answer interesting questions is a critical part of your project. Where and how you find this data is up to you. A quick web search on data about a topic will likely turn up several potential sources. It’s also ok if you have to combine multiple for your needs. Just remember that you will not want to spend too much time wrangling data, as the main criteria for grading your project rely on your visualization, not your ability to scrape, join, and clean data.

A few online data repositories that you may find helpful as a starting point (remember, you can find your own data, you dont’ have to use these):

Tips

The following tips are a collection of lessons learned from previous semesters.

Tips for a Good Project

  • Carefully select your data. Your data should be matched with an interesting message, finding, or narrative that you are able to communicate and present visually. This is a crucial step! Boring data makes for boring visualizations.
  • Meet with your team regularly.
  • Spend time thinking creatively about your data and visualization design. For instance, spending 30 minutes on generating as many different examples of visualizations is a great use of a small amount of time. It will help you think beyond initial examples or ideas.
  • Design, and re-design. As you start seeing your data visually, you will likely come up with new ideas and concepts. Consider including these!

Tips for a Poor Project

  • The data was huge, hard to get, and unnecessarily complex. As a result, none of the visualization designs attempted worked well.
  • The team was never on the same page about what the point of the visualization was.
  • Most team members were not interested in the data.
  • Ran out of time.