Assignment 3b: Peer Evaluation

You will review four A3 submissions from your classmates and share constructive feedback. This assignment is an opportunity to both (a) develop skills to effectively evaluate and critically analyze visualization designs, and (b) help guide subsequent efforts by your peers to improve project quality and visualization design across the class.

An important goal for this assignment is to understand how visualization designs might aim to intentionally (or unintentionally) mislead the viewer, so as to provide you with more confidence and skepticism when interpreting visualizations in the wild.

Assignment

For each peer evaluation, begin by critically reading the visualization and try to determine whether it is an ethical or a deceptive visualization design. Note what you discover and learn about the data set, and what properties lead you to a particular conclusion. You will be assigned at least one ethical and one deceptive visualization to review; the other two visualizations will be randomly assigned.

Next, author a constructive critique of the visualization design that addresses at least the following concerns:

• Visual Encodings. Are expressive and effective visual encodings applied? How well do they reveal the most important features or trends of the underlying data? Is critical data easily seen, or is it somehow hidden? Is the target audience likely to understand the visualization? How clear and transparent is the design?
• Design Quality. Assess the overall visualization quality in terms of organization and presentation. Are elements appropriately titled or labeled? Is there appropriate spacing, layout, legible type, and other forms of design styling? Is it clear where to begin viewing the design? Is the overall display confusing or cluttered? Is there important information missing that is needed to interpret the visualization approapriately?
• Task Effectiveness. How successful is the visualization in meeting the intended goals? Is the viewer able to readily answer the question proposed or addressed by the visualization? For an ethical design, is the information clear and transparent? For a deceptive design, does it intentionally (but subtly) mislead the viewer?

For each of the concerns listed above, we recommend using the "I like / I wish / What if?" format. Be sure to share positive feedback on effective aspects, critical (but respectful!) feedback on what might be improved, and more wild (even half-baked) ideas your fellow students might explore in subsequent design iterations or future work. Each peer review should contain at least a dozen such comments, often much more!

Submission Details

This is an individual assignment. You may not work in groups.

Your peer evaluations are due Mon 2/15, 11:59pm. Assignments of visualizations to students will be listed on the Canvas page for this assignment. You must submit peer evaluations for four visualizations. To submit your critiques, you must use the provided submission form. Please carefully respond to each of the questions raised above in your submissions. You should submit four separate forms, one for each assigned visualization. When submitting your forms, please take care to enter the visualization name exactly as provided. Typos that require manual correction by the course staff may result in point deductions.