Requirements for Information Visualization
- Textbooks
- LinkedIn Learning
- Software
- Grading
- Exercises (75%)
- Participation (5%)
- Short Reports (15%)
- Visualization Tasks (25%)
- Heuristic Evaluation of InfoVis Tool (15%)
- DataStory Design Principles & Examples (15%)
- Term Project (25%)
Textbooks
Required - Data Journalism Handbook v2 - Online Version
Recommended
- Information Visualization: Perception for Design (Interactive Technologies) by Colin Ware
- The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization (Voices That Matter) by Alberto Cairo
LinkedIn Learning
- SC&I is subscribing to a service called LinkedIn Learning (previously called LyndaCampus) that is a school-wide version of linkedin.com/learning, an online training library with many video based training movies. LinkedIn Learning is available for free for students registered in SC&I courses and can be used to learn software, programming skills, video techniques, etc.
Titles include: all of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc.), all of Adobe (DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Animate, etc.), Fundamentals of Video, iMovie, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, SPSS, Google Docs, HTML5, CSS, MySQL, PHP, Python, C/C++/C#, WordPress, etc. Students can watch the videos, follow along with exercise files, and even print a certificate of completion upon completion of a course. - Login to LinkedIn Learning (when you first log into LinkedIn Learning, you are given the opportunity to personalize your profile).
- Remember: you must be logged into LinkedIn Learning to be able to access the linkedin.com/learning videos included in the Lectures page of this course.
- For more information and access instructions, please see https://it.rutgers.edu/linkedin-learning/. For any difficulties accessing the content of linkedin.com/learning please contact SC&I IT Services at help@comminfo.rutgers.edu.
Software
- Tableau (Win & Mac) free access will be provided for this state-of-the-art Business Intelligence toolset that supports many types of visualizations and linked displays.
- Download & Install Tableau (runs on Windows and Mac computers)
- Download link: http://www.tableau.com/tft/activation (Key info will be provided in announcement)
- Instructions: Click on the link above and fill out the form on the right hand side of the page. Under "Job Title", mark Student; and under "Organization", please input the name of your school.
- Other options: Download | Student Edition (you can also use Student Edition which gives full-time students enrolled at an accredited academic institution a 1-year license of Tableau Desktop).
- Starting with Tableau version 10.5 coming in Fall 2017, new versions of Tableau will only run on 64-bit operating systems. Tableau 10.4 will be the last version of Tableau Desktop, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Public to support 32-bit Windows operating systems.
- Previous Releases: https://www.tableau.com/support/releases
- Tutorials: Week 5 on Lectures page.
- Option: DataVis Programming using D3.js (contact instructor)
Grading
92 - 100 | A |
89 - 91 | B+ |
82 - 88 | B |
79 - 81 | C+ |
72 - 78 | C |
Exercises
- Participation (5%)
- You are expected to participate at least twice in each discussion topic in a thoughtful and insightful way.
- You will receive feedback on your participation in the weekly class discussions at end of Week 7 and the final score will be assigned at the end of Week 15.
- Short Reports (15%)
- You will write short reports, using a provided templates, for several papers or book chapters that will be made available electronically – see Schedule and Exercises.
- Visualization Tasks (25%) You will create Tableau visualizations.
- DataVis Programming using D3.js: please contact instructor if you are interested to learn how to use JavaScript, HTML, SVG and CSS to create interactive visualizations.
- Evaluation of InfoVis Tool (15%)
- You will conduct a Heuristic Evaluation of a tool or website TBA using Nielsen's 10 Heuristics.
- A template will be provided that you will use to write a short report (4-5 pages) that identifies usability issues and suggests improvements.
- DataStory Design Principles & Examples (15%)
- You will write a paper that describes your understanding, based on the materials covered and the topics discussed in class, how to design an effective “DataStory” and provide examples.
- The goal is to combine and synthesize the papers by all students to hopefully arrive at a “DataStory Manifesto”.
Project (25% of Course Grade)
You can choose between several Individual Project options or a Group Project.
- Screencast: Brief Overview of Possible Term Projects
- Options
- Individual Project options
- Review and Analyze existing visualization tools for a specific data domain.
- Create a How to Guide that describes how to visualize certain data sets and which tools can be used.
- Evaluate InfoVis tool: conduct a user study to evaluate a visualization tool.
- Create InfoVis Prototype: creating or enhancing a visualization tool.
- Group Project
- Collect Large Data Set for specific data domain and/or Use Data APIs to access large data domain.
- Use Visualization Tool(s), such as ManyEyes, Google Motion Charts, Tableau, and/or Google Fusion Tables to visualize data.
- Develop DataStory for specific data domain and presented data.