Requirements

Collect Four examples of data visualizations.

Write a brief critique for each data visualization based on what I have discussed in the lectures: the design principles, cognitive theories, and the theory on visual variables. Im particularly interested in your critiques of poorly designed data visualizations, but very well designed data visualization can also be cited.

Your report should contain the following.

a. Where did you find this data visualization?

b. What is the purpose of this data visualization? Who are the target readership?

Briefly describe the data.

c. Outline the design decisions in each visualization? What kind of visual units and visual variables are used in each visualization? Use a table to show which type of visual variable is mapped to which type of data.

d. Is this data visualization well designed? Is this an effective visualization? Point out which areas of the design are good or bad. If its poorly designed, what design principles does it violate?

f. Can you improve this data visualization? I encourage you to create a revised visualization, like the ones at http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php.

I expect at least one page of discussion for each visualization, including figures.

Where to find data visualizations?

You can find data visualizations published in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and of course, on Internet. Here are a few places you can look:

Use Census Bureau (www.census.gov) and American FactFinder (http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml )

http://www.worldmapper.org/

https://courses.washington.edu/info424/2007/vizGallery.html

http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/04/visualization-hall-of-shame-april-2010.html

New York Times and the Guardian have a lot of online interactive visualizations.

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

http://flowingdata.com/

https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery

This website has the valuable information that we learn from class : https://eazybi.com/blog/data_visualization_and_chart_types/