Data Visualisation Project

DATA VISUALISATION

The best way to become good at data visualisation is through building them!

Task
In this multi-part assignment worth 30% of your final mark, you will design and build an effective data visualisation. This will require you to critically evaluate information and visualisations in a domain of your choice and develop your own visualisation using the Tableau software.
The aim of the assignment is to apply the data visualisation techniques examined over the course of the semester, and demonstrate their use in an innovative context. As such, the visualisation should satisfy the following:
- It should address a particular need within a specific domain of your choosing. It must be targeted to the domain, its needs, and its users. This does not mean the visualisation has to solve a problem as such, but it must be a visualisation that is useful to people within the chosen domain.
- It should use a data source relevant to the domain. The data source does not have to come from within the domain, however the data itself must obviously be relevant. Data can be of any kind.
- It should turn data/information into something meaningful and provide insight that would otherwise be difficult without the visualisation.
- It can either consist of a static visualisation of the data or provide interactive exploration.
- It should show some innovation. It does not have to be wholly original, but CANNOT simply be a replica of a visualisation that already exists in the domain. It could be an innovative visualisation, or the use of a known visualisation with a new kind of data.
- It should demonstrate use of the Five Design Sheet methodology for sketching and planning the design of your visualisation.
- It should demonstrate use of the Munzer What/Why/How framework discussed in lectures for correctly assessing the type of data, the goals of the visualisation and the design of the visualisation, respectively.

Learning outcomes

This assessment is related to learning objectives:
1. critically analyse data visualisations;

2. create effective data visualisations;

4. describe the advantages, drawbacks and pitfalls of the visual presentation of data as compared to its presentation using other media.

Assignment details

The assignment has 5 main parts

1. Choose the domain: In week 3 you will bring to class a short description of the proposed application domain and questions that your visualisation will be designed to answer. It should also indicate where you intend to obtain data for the visualisation. Your tutor will discuss this with you in class. You MUST receive approval from the tutor for the choice of application domain and questions before proceeding with the rest of the assignment.

2. Critical Review: In week 6 of class you will give a 5-minute presentation to the class on existing visualisations for your chosen domain/question and related domains/questions. You should critically review these visualisations, making use of the concepts taught in this unit.

3. Design and Implementation: You will design and build an information visualisation for the domain that you think is better than current approaches, using Tableau. The implementation should satisfy the elements listed in the section (‘Tasks') above. You will submit the visualisation in week 12, but you should have it complete for the week 11 presentation (see below). If you wish to develop your interactive visualisation system using technology other than Tableau (e.g., HTML5 or D3) you may do so but you must seek permission from your tutor first.

4. Presentation: In week 11 in class you will give a 5-minute presentation to the class that demonstrates your visualisation and describes the design decisions you have made and the reasons for them.

5. Report: At the end of week 12 you will submit a written report of no more than 3000 words (based on your presentations and feedback for them) that contains:

a. Problem description and motivation

b. Critical review of related visualisations

c. Descriptions of design process and the final visualisation design including reasons for your choices

d. Appropriate references and bibliography

Instructions for the final report

The final visualisation and the final report for your visualisation project

Length: The maximum length of your report is 3000 words.

Structure: Below is a suggested structure for the report, but you can adapt the structure of the report to your project. For example, you would add a section, if you used external software or developed your own scripts for data conversion. Select section titles and add subsections that are appropriate for your project.
• Title page: include author name, unit number and unit name, university, date, project title, and a link to your visualisation.
• Describe the domain, the problem your visualisation addresses, the motivation, and typical users.
• Critical review of related visualisations: Review existing similar visualisations, and describe how your visualisation improves upon these existing visualisations.
• A brief description of the design process and your design choices. You can include your results of the five design sheet methodology here or in an appendix.
• Sources of the data with full bibliographic details to locate the data.
• A description of your final visualisation including reasons for your choices. Describe how your visualisation allows the data to be interpreted in a way that effectively generates knowledge. Demonstrate that the visualisation idioms enable this knowledge and are appropriate for the data. Outline the innovative aspects of your visualisation. Describe how your visualisation shows an overview, allows to zoom/filter and provides details on demand. Describe how the viewer is guided through the visualisation by storytelling techniques.
• Bibliography: Cite sources, such as web pages, academic papers, books, newspaper articles, etc. in your text and place a list of bibliographic references in a separate section.
• Optional appendices: include scripting code that you developed, or other relevant materials that are too long to include in the main body of your report in one or multiple appendices.