Assignment 1: Sparks Presentation

Schedule / Sign-up Sheet 👈

In teams of 3~4, 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 7min., with 5min. afterwards for discussion.

Submit your group’s presentation (google slides or PDF only) through the assignment form and individually, your peer assessments by Monday 11:59pm ET the day before your scheduled time to present.

Part I: Background

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

What is their approach? E.g. how might they be different from other data viz practitioners?
What types of problems do they tend to tackle? What is their specialty?
What styles of data 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:

How do you think their data was structured?
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 tools did they use?

Part III: For Discussion

End your presentation with 3 questions for discussion with your classmates. Good starters are things (e.g. design or implementation decisions) you learned which you want to apply to your assignments, things that may have been points of disagreement amongst your teammates, or things that may have been confusing.

Visualization Practitioners/Teams

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.