All the work that you are asked to complete throughout the semester, both at home and in class sessions, is building towards a single final project of your choice. This gives you very free rein to dive deep into a new area that your are curious or/and passionate about and become an expert in it. This also means that much of the definition for this final project lies with you and your design decisions.
That said, this page outlines some general guidelines for how we will go about this.
Project Support Mechanisms
Working Groups
At the beginning of the semester you will be divided into small working groups of 3-4 students. Each class will open with a group sync for you to update each other on where you are in your project and help each other if anything is holding you back. This is also a good opportunity to get/give meaningful feedback throughout the development process from people who have the context of your project goals.
Development Workshops
We will have 2 in-class development workshops towards the beginning of the semester to help you clarify your topic and project goals. The first workshop will be a concept ideation workshop where you will work towards picking a topic and understanding your narrative direction, indented audience, and potential datasets. The second workshop a bit later in the semester will be a visual ideation workshop and will focus more on how you can craft your design/visuals to most effectively achieve your project goals.
Praxis Workshops
Later in the semester, between critiques, we will also have two hands-on working sessions. During these you can receive help both from me and from your peers about how to best implement your vision.
Expected Deliverables
| Deliverable | Due Date |
| Project Brief | September 22, 2020 |
| Visual Proposal (Design Deck) | October 20, 2020 |
| Pre-Recorded Video Walkthrough + Fill in Project Metadata Sheet | December 11th, 2020 |
| Final Presentation Showcase | December 15th, 2020 |
| Deployed Final Project + Reflection + Data Documentation | December 25, 2020 |
Project Brief
Towards the fourth week of the semester, you will be required to submit a ‘project brief’ stating your intentions for what you plan to work on for the rest of the course. This can take many forms but must at a minimum communicate what your aims and project plan are including:
- your proposed topic
- current unknowns – what do you still need to research
- proposed datasources – how much manipulation do they need? how hard are they to access?
- additional inspiration or context for better understanding you vision
Forms this could take:
- pitch deck
- mood board
- mind map / flow chart
- prospectus/abstract (written out)
Visual Proposal: Design Deck // High Fidelity Mockups // Interactive Prototype Sketches
Chose a design medium of your choice to clearly communicate your project goal and intention to others. Think of this as a way to convey your vision to clients, stakeholders, investors, bosses and other interested parties before you begin to technically implement your project. This will be due towards the seventh week of class and should put you in a good position to start development.
Deployed Project
This is what this whole class is working towards. The project can be of any type you want — dashboard, narrative, ‘scrolly-telling’, movie, etc. You can create this in any language or medium that you like, but the course will focus on giving you JavaScript and web development concepts to this end. The final project should be hosted somewhere for others to access (recommended Github Pages).
Most of the project is up to you, but it will be graded with the following in mind.
In creating this project you should:
- show a deep understanding of your subject matter and effectively communicate it to your intended audience
- accurately, intuitively, and ethically represent your data (providing proper context and citations)
- utilize what you learned about visual theory, animation, transitions, and interactions to engage your audience
- be responsive to different screen sizes, and accessible to different users.
Final Presentation + Pre-Recorded Video Walkthrough
Our final class, on December 15th 2020, will consist of rapid 5-7 minute long presentations of your final projects. This session will be hosted live on Zoom Webinar for the larger data vis community to attend (you are more than welcome to invite people as well!).
In order to ensure this goes smoothly in an online forum, we will be using pre-recorded videos of the projects. This is to ensure that last minute bugs or connection errors don’t prevent your project from appearing in its best light. You can decide whether you’d like to pre-record your audio ahead of time, or if you would prefer to talk over your video live the day of.
You are required to submit a pre-recorded video of your project by the Friday before the presentation (December 11th, 2020). If you find that you make more updates during that final weekend, you can submit another version up until the evening of December 14th and the latest version will be shown.
Write up // Reflection // Documentation
Finally, you will be expected to frame and reflect upon your work. This can also take any form you see fit. Some suggestions include a README file in your Github repository, or perhaps a Medium article or Observable notebook if you would like to share your process with a broader audience.
Your write up should be roughly 1,000-1,500 words, and reflect on any/all of the following:
- Background context on your topic and why you picked it
- Main takeaways from your research – what did you discover? what do you think others should learn from it?
- Outline the major design decisions you made for your visuals, explain how you got there and why you picked them.
- How did your final project differ from the initial brief and mockups that you outlined? What brought you to these changes?
- What were some challenges? How would you mitigate them with your next project?
- What suggestions would you have for others coming into this subject matter?technology? visual style?
- If you had more time and resources, what would you add/remove/change about your project?
