• The Final Crit

Submitting your work

• By midnight on the evening of May 22nd (one week from today), you must email me documentation for all three of your projects from the semester:
  • A Thousand Suns
  • Uncharted
  • Free Form
• Project documentation should take the form of PDFs, JPEGs, Videos, and URLs to project webpages. Web work should also be represented in the form of screenshots or the like for future-proofness.
• In addition, I still haven't received Presentation files from most of you. Please send both a PDF and a Powerpoint/Keynote/etc. file. If your talk consisted of web links, please submit the list of URLs in a text file.

By: Jonathan W. Melendez Davidson
05.08.17

1. The eerie power of miss information is very familiar to us today. These examples are what brought this country and many others into our current status. Reading the first section of this article I wonder if the fight against ‘alt-facts’ is a matter of being the first one to release information rather than treating the effect of others responses.

2. Would we be better at facts if we didn’t collaborate?

3. It’s is part of our nature to doubt; would fact really change our beliefs? After reading this article I’m still left with the same question. I get that nature has evolved us to be skeptical and to believe that which we agree with anyway. But then is the point of data visualization just to disperse information as broadly a possible to create some community of beliefs?

1. The scientific laboratory type of experience is a much better model for reaching factual consensus, but is it possible to apply this model to qualitative or subjective studies?

2. The article cites hunter-gatherer dynamics as the original source of this type of survival of the fittest behavioral evolution, but how much does laziness or lack of attention span affect our stubborn point of views?

3. Is the main stream media responsible for the alt-truth movement? What are the specific things they should do to revitalize integrity in the way they disseminate information?

• Presentations
  • Philip - Jennifer Daniel
  • Connor – Oliver Byrne
  • Ala – [Unspecified cartographer]
• Reading #9
• Individual meetings on Free form to plan out finishing touches

Assignment

• Bring in finished versions of your final project for a group critique featuring guest critic Valeria Mogilevich
• Also bring in the most up-to-date revisions of your Thousand Suns and Uncharted projects

For interactive graphics, why was it assumed people wanted to or would interact with them in the first place?

If information is hidden within interactive graphics, why was it assumed people would find the important bits? If people can’t view all of the essential information at once, how are they able to figure out the main point?

Is it not an equally grave mistake to assume people will interact with interactive installations as it is to assume they will interact with interactive graphics? If interactivity, even when well designed, continues to fail to engage viewers/users, why is it that interactive installations are more capable of that engagement?

• Presentations
  • Chloe - Nicholas Felton
  • Grace - Ben Fry
  • Gavin - Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
  • Philip - Jennifer Daniel
  • Molly - W.E.B. Du Bois
• Reading #8
• Look over your Free form rough drafts in small groups

Assignment

• Continue developing your final project in preparation for one-on-one meetings next week
• Read Elizabeth Kolbert’s article Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds and post discussion questions with the R9 tag.

By Elizabeth Kolbert

New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason

Read at the New Yorker

By Jonathan W. Melendez Davidson 05.01.2017

1. At first, the post assumes that al data visualization is graphic and in a 2D format, yet it ignores data visualizations which occur through the creation of experiences and installations which are bound to go beyond the point and click interfaces. Of course, the act of making them physical makes them less ‘viral’ and accessible to large audiences but might leave a larger impact on those who do interact with it.

2. The authors brings up a good point which we briefly discussed in class and that is that while designing visualizations of data we rarely ever think about the audience. Who is the target we are seeking to deliver this information too and what is the best way to deliver it to them. This lack of specificity raises the problem of lack of interaction.

3. Onboarding seems to be the trickiest part when making data visualizations how to get the user or intended audience to care/understand the work at hand. But beyond that I think data visualizations tend to believe themselves as an end goals without taking responsibility of the actions which occur after information transmission. I wonder if designers should go beyond the transmission of data to create that care and transform that care into a specific action.

1. I think there is merit to the idea of static interactivity and the use of a high resolution poster, but I wonder if that would work on a computer screen. Is there a way to grab people's attention by having them do a similar zoom in that draws them in to dig through the data?

2. Is the intrinsic condition of narcissism a valid opportunity to exploit or should we be combatting that by making the data self-reflective about our narcissistic tendencies?

3. How does interactivity affect how much information you take away from the visualization? In my personal experience it is similar to writing flash cards to study for a text, by engaging with the information with muscle memory it creates a memorable experience that may make the user more easily able to recall the data.

-Gavin

are people today interested in quicker information? Perhaps the screen should not be considered a reliable reading format by the designer.

Perhaps the action of scrolling and association with fast information prevents the user from wanting to truly anywise, observe and carefully read a carried visual data design?

Dueling blog posts from Dominikus Baur & Gregor Aisch

The Death of Interactive Infographics?

If you’re doing interaction well, it can turn your visualization from a well-made newspaper that gives you the bullet points into a conversation almost. As if you were having a tête-à-tête with an expert on the data, patient enough to explain you everything.

That’s the ideal, at least.

Read Dominikus’s post on Medium

In Defense of Interactive Graphics

Knowing that the majority of readers doesn’t click buttons does not mean you shouldn’t use any buttons. Knowing that many many people will ignore your tooltips doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use any tooltips.

All it means is that you should not hide important content behind interactions.

Read Gregor’s rebuttal at vis4.net

• Presentations
  • Caitlyn Sit on Mike Bostock
  • Chloe Karayiannis Nicholas Felton
  • Grace Kim Ben Fry
• Reading #7
• Uncharted: final crit
• Time permitting: look over Free form sketches and firm up data sourcing

Assignment

• Make a rough draft of your final project in preparation for a group crit next week.
• Read this pair of blog posts debating the role of interactivity in information graphics and post discussion questions with the R8 tag.

Jonathan Melendez Davidson - 04.24.17

1. Due to the complexity of Sociology is it good to utilize Data visualization? Based on the previous reading of the Dots, how can we avoid expressing complex issues in society with the common mistakes that occur in data visualization of avoiding the micro scale, the individual affected?

2. The idea brought up of utilizing Visualization as a working tool rather than a superfluous tool to mislead audiences “We do not think visualization will give us the right answer simply by looking. Rather, we should think about how visualization might be more effectively integrated into all stages of our work.” Is something I think about constantly. I do believe in sharing data but if the idea of a visualization becomes to express some sort of bias then it obscures the purity of the data. Should data visualization become more of an internal process rather than an external product? Visualization for exploration rather than for presentation.

3. I am a bit perplexed after reading this entry, I’m still confused by the assumption that the audience of the data will be mostly experts in X or Y field where these journals are being published. I believe in open data and the ability to make that accessible, but if we are relying on the idea that only those which are experts in our field can understand the data clearly then what is the point?