Assignment: Peer Review of Deceptive Visualizations

You will review two Deceptive Visualization 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 Description

For each peer review, begin by critically reading the visualizations and try to determine which is the earnest design and which is the deceptive design. Note what you discover and learn about the data set, and what properties lead you to a particular conclusion. You must identify which visualization you believe to be intentionally deceptive, along with a rationale indicating which design elements led you to this conclusion.

Next, author constructive critiques for each visualization design. Consider the following concerns:

• Are expressive and effective visual encodings applied?
• How well does the choice of encodings they reveal the most important features or trends of the underlying data?
• Is critical data easily seen, or is it somehow hidden?
• Is an audience likely to understand the visualization?
• How clear and transparent is the design?
• Are elements appropriately titled or labeled?
• Is there appropriate spacing, layout, legible type, and other forms of design styling?
• Is the overall display confusing or cluttered?
• Is there important information missing that is needed to interpret the visualization?

To share critique, we will use the “I like / I wish / What if?” format. This involves sharing positive feedback on effective aspects, critical (but respectful!) feedback on what might be improved, and more wild (even half-baked) ideas your fellow students could explore in subsequent design iterations or future work. For each visualization, you must provide at least two statements in each of the I like / I wish / What if? categories.

Grading

Grading is based on “best effort”. If you complete the assignment, provide meaningful feedback specific to student designs, and produce the required amount of feedback, you should get full credit.

Submission Details

This is an individual assignment. You may not work in groups. Your assigned peer review submissions and a link to the review form will be shared on Ed. For each assigned submission, carefully respond to each of the questions raised in the peer review form. You should submit two separate forms, one for each assigned submission. When submitting your forms, please take care to enter the submission identifier exactly as provided. Typos that require manual correction by the course staff may result in point deductions.