A0: Sparks Presentation

Schedule / Sign-up Sheet

In teams of 3, choose from one of the visualization practitioners/teams below that you find inspiring and prepare a short set of slides, to be presented at the beginning of class on the day for which you signed up. You may not signup for a practitioner/team that has already been taken.

Your presentation should be 10min., with 5min. afterwards for questions.

Submit your presentation (google slides or PDF only) through the assignment form.

Part I: Background

Describe this group/individual’s body of work. Consider:

• What is their approach?
• What types of problems do they tend to tackle? What is their specialty?
• What styles of presentation do they tend to build? Who is their typical audience?

Part II: Analyze One Project

Focus on one specific project of theirs which you find interesting. It doesn’t necessarily have to be what you think is their “best” project. Show us what it’s about, how it works, and then answer:

• In what ways do you think the project is successful? In what ways do you think it could be improved?
• Which design decision did you like best? Why?
• What was their process? What were challenges along the way? What tools did they use?

Visualization Practitioners/Teams

• Sosolimited
• Fathom Information Design
• Moritz Stefaner
• Wattenberg and Viégas / Flowing Media
• Accurat Studio
• OmniSci
• Stamen Studio
• Pitch Interactive
• Periscopic
• Google Arts & Culture team
• Google Big Picture group
• Distill.pub
• MIT Senseable City Lab
• UW Interactive Data Lab
• Lev Manovich / Software Studies Lab
• FiveThiryEight
• Amanda Cox / NYTimes Upshot
• Nadieh Bremer / Visual Cinnamon, talk at Eyeo Festival
• Adam Pearce / Chart Diary, NYT, Google
• Nathan Yau / Flowing Data, talk at Eyeo Festival
• R2D3
• The Pudding

Grading Criteria

• Clear and coherent presentation, with speaking time distributed across team members.
• Succinctly summarizing the practitioner/team’s body of work while demonstrating breadth of research.
• Depth of research into chosen project, with generalizable insights focused on the practice of visualization.
• Expressive & elegant visual slides.