Week 12 Lab: Final Project Reminders, Exercise

CS-GY 6313 - Information Visualization

Ryan Kim

New York University

2025-11-21

Week 12 Lab Overview

Today’s Lab Activities

Today we will be a exploring the following topics:

1. Group and Mini Projects: Reminders
2. Group Project Evaluation
   1. What makes a Good Project?
   2. Evaluation Criteria
3. Exercise: Evaluating Existing Dashboards

Group and Mini Projects: Reminders

Assignment	Due Date	Details
Milestone #4: Second Draft	Dec. 1st	Refined narrative and polished visualizations
Mini-Project #3	Dec. 4th	Network data visualization
Final Project Presentations	Dec. 5th	Good luck!

Group Project Milestone #4: Deliverables

Transform your notebook into a complete article with:

• Title - Clear and informative
• Introduction - Problem, background, motivation, overview of findings
• Data Description - Sources, collection methods, attributes used
• Questions and Findings - For each question:
  • Clear question statement
  • Polished D3 visualization
  • Analysis and interpretation
  • Insights and implications
• Conclusion - Summary of findings, recommendations, limitations

Focus on narrative flow - someone unfamiliar with your project should be able to read and understand it.

This is where you transition from “a bunch of charts” to “a coherent story.” The introduction sets up the problem and tells readers what to expect. Each section builds on the previous one. The conclusion ties it all together and explains what it means. This is also when you polish your visualizations: fix labels, improve colors, refine interactions, add annotations. Think about it like writing a blog post or article for a technical audience. What would they need to know? What order makes sense?

Group Project Evaluation

What makes a Good Project?

Evaluation Criteria

What Makes a Good Project?

1. Clear Problem Statement
   • Specific, focused, and well-motivated
   • Explains why this matters

2. Rich Dataset(s)
   • Accessible, complete, and appropriate
   • Multiple attributes to explore
   • Temporal and/or spatial dimensions

3. Coherent Questions
   • Form a logical progression (a story)
   • Can be answered with visualizations
   • Build toward insights

4. Appropriate Visualizations
   • Match the data and questions
   • Well-designed and clearly labeled
   • Interactive where it adds value

The best projects:

• Tell a story:
  • Explore a compelling problem
  • Use appropriate data to explore it
  • ask questions that build on each other
  • reveal insights that matter.

• Avoid:
  • “Let’s visualize this data” without clear questions.
  • Questions that are too broad (“what patterns exist?”) or too narrow (“what was the value on Tuesday?”).

Think about what a reader would learn from your project and why they should care.

Evaluation Criteria

Technical Implementation (35%)

• D3 code quality and correctness
• Appropriate use of D3 features
• Interactivity implementation
• Code organization and documentation

Visualization Design (30%)

• Appropriate chart types
• Effective visual encodings
• Clear labels and legends
• Color and layout choices
• Accessibility considerations

Analysis & Insights (20%)

• Question quality and coherence
• Depth of analysis
• Insight generation
• Interpretation accuracy

Communication (10%)

• Narrative flow
• Writing clarity
• Presentation quality
• Professional polish

Teamwork (5%)

• Equal contribution
• Coordination evidence

Technical implementation and visualization design together are 65% of your grade - execution matters! We’re checking: Does your D3 code work correctly? Did you choose appropriate visualizations? Are they well-designed? Analysis and insights are 20% - you need to actually interpret your visualizations and derive meaningful findings. Communication is 10% - can someone else understand your work? Teamwork is 5% but we may adjust individual grades if contributions are very unequal. Document who did what in your final submission.

Lab Exercises:
Evaluating Existing Dashboards

Our Goal: Look at various examples of implementations, and argue how they fit within our standards

For each example:

1. Try to understand the purpose behind the dashboard
2. Answer the linked questions
3. Let’s Discuss!

Approx. ~5mins for each example.

Example #1: Wealth shown to scale

• URL: https://simaneta.github.io/1-pixel-wealth-copy/
• Google Form: https://forms.gle/XwrAoPsmqhYAxFjG6

Example #2: WTF Happened In 1971

• URL: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
• Google Form: https://forms.gle/zTqK9UhcFFrkCXGj8

Example #3: Locomotion Vault

• URL: https://locomotionvault.github.io/
• Google Form:: https://forms.gle/zvdBTZhyP2FotDmn7

Example #4: after babylon

• URL: http://www.puffpuffproject.com/languages.html
• Google Form: https://forms.gle/VWAszUYegrgnBBir8

Example 5: Love Songs

• URL: https://pudding.cool/2024/11/love-songs/
• Google Form: https://forms.gle/9Wjwbf4S5gsywj8W8

Example 6: Coronavirus Tracked

• URL: https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=bra&areas=gbr&areas=rus&areas=rou&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usla&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=usak&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustn&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths
• Google Form: https://forms.gle/Qt45JHxzAw2kKXE2A

Final Reminders

Resources for You

• https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/data-visualization-and-dashboard-design-case-study-c639da21e4c9
• https://pudding.cool/
• https://www.theguardian.com/interactive

Group and Mini Projects: Reminders

Assignment	Due Date	Details
Milestone #4: Second Draft	Dec. 1st	Refined narrative and polished visualizations
Mini-Project #3	Dec. 4th	Network data visualization
Final Project Presentations	Dec. 5th	Good luck!

REMINDER: Legislative Friday!

• Next class is on the Nov. 26th!
• No Lab!