Final Project: Data for Civic Participation
The final project will provide hands-on experience designing, implementing, and deploying interactive visualizations. Your project should address a concrete visualization challenge and should propose a novel, creative solution. The final deliverable should take the form of either an explanatory narrative or exploratory analysis tool, deployed as an interactive web page. Project teams should consist of 3-4 people.
The final project theme is data for civic participation. How might data visualization help us better understand the workings of selected aspects of our society? Your project must visualize one or more publicly accessible datasets relevant to the functioning of local, national, or global communities. You are free to choose a specific domain of interest. Example topics include health, transportation, economic development, climate, migration, humanitarian aid, legislative voting, political discourse, and campaign finance. Talk to the course staff if you have any questions regarding the project theme.
In addition, you will be responsible for presenting your project and providing feedback to help evaluate the work of your peers. At the end of the quarter we will have a public showcase for you to share your work with both your colleagues and invited guests.
Prior to starting your project, it is helpful to gain a sense of what goes into formulating a successful visualization project and to beware of common pitfalls. We encourage you to read A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation by Tamara Munzner. This paper is required reading later in the course, so you might as well get a head start!
Project Milestones
The final project consists of five milestones:
- Proposal (Tue 4/18 5pm). Propose your project topic, dataset(s) and team members.
- Prototype (Wed 5/3, 11:59pm). Develop an initial interactive visualization for your topic.
- Peer Evaluation (Wed 5/10, 5pm). Share your initial prototype with the class and provide structured feedback for your peers.
- Deliverables (Wed 5/31, 11:59pm). Informed by your initial prototype, expand your project to a full interactive web page. Produce a demo video and create a poster for inclusion at the final project showcase.
- Showcase (Mon 6/5, 10:30am-1pm, Allen Center atrium). Present your project and demo in the final project showcase.
The prototype and final deliverables will be submitted and deployed on the CSE 442 GitHub organization. You will be assigned repositories after submitting your proposal.