- Due March 31
- Prototype your book
- Include at least one visualization
- Other parts can be rough or wireframed
- Watch The Design of Nothing by Andy Kirk
- Nothing to turn in this week, just bring your WIP to class for feedback
- We'll have a studio day, so please come with coffee and a snack, and be ready to work!
This week, your goal should be a rough prototype of your book, including at least one visualization (your book needs three total). This doesn't need to be perfect yet: instead, think about the wireframes we made in class and how you can weave a story through your book. This idea of "storytelling" is key here and in much of data vis: you can't do everything in a single visualization! Instead, how do you lead us through the story you're trying to tell? What is important for us to see first: the whole dataset, an important part, a human detail, an arresting image?
Another useful way to frame this work is using Seven Stages of Creating a Data Visualization by Ben Fry (co-creator of the Processing language and head of Fathom Information Design):
- Acquire: Formulate a question, find your sources and gather data
- Parse: What's in the data? What ideas does the data suggest?
- Filter: Determine which data-points/correlations are most interesting, remove "noise" from dataset
- Mine: Extract data for your visualization, double-check results
- Represent: Correlate data into meaningful forms, create initial representations of data in visual form
- Refine: Evaluate the results of early representations, iteratively refine the representation and question
- Interact: View the results, look for interesting stories, add value or meaning through additions/features
Please also watch Andy Kirk's amazing talk The Design of Nothing: Null, Zero, Blank. It's just over 20 minutes long but is packed with amazing examples for how to think about and deal with missing data.