MIT Interactive Visualization & Society (Spring 2024)

Check out the final project showcase!

The world is awash with increasing amounts of data, and we must keep afloat with our relatively constant perceptual and cognitive abilities. Visualization provides one means of combating information overload, as a well-designed visual encoding can supplant cognitive calculations with simpler perceptual inferences and improve comprehension, memory, and decision making. Moreover, visual representations may help engage more diverse audiences in the process of analytic thinking.

By the end of this course, you should expect to be able to:

  1. Understand key visualization techniques and theory.
  2. Design, evaluate, and critique visualization designs.
  3. Wrangle and explore datasets through visualization using Tableau.
  4. Tell stories with data, and use visualization for policy change.
  5. Implement interactive data visualizations using D3.js.
  6. Develop a substantial visualization project.
  7. Read and discuss visualization research papers (graduate students only).

Theme: Housing Affordability in Metro Boston

Each year, the class works with a “client” focusing on a theme. This year, our partner is the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), a public planning agency whose goals are to promote regional collaboration around the following goals: sound municipal management, sustainable land use, protection of natural resources, efficient and affordable transportation, a diverse housing stock, public safety, economic development, clean energy, healthy communities, an informed public, and equity and opportunity. MAPC serves the 101 cities and towns in the Greater Boston Area.

The class and MAPC will work together on the topic of Housing Affordability in Greater Boston. As students may have noticed when they seek to rent apartments in Cambridge or the surrounding area, housing prices in the area have skyrocketed in recent decades. Greater Boston is the third most expensive housing market in the nation, for both buying and renting. The median rent in the Greater Boston area is $2,740. The average monthly rent in Cambridge is $3,614. To buy a home in Cambridge, you need nearly a million dollars. While it is recommended that households spend 30% of their monthly income on housing, more than half (51%) of Bostonians have to spend more than that just to keep themselves housed. This often means that families have to choose between paying their rent and eating, accessing medicines, purchasing school supplies or other necessities. If they cannot pay, residents may face foreclosure, eviction, and all of the physical and mental health consequences of homelessness. Older adults cannot afford to stay in their homes and close to the places where they have family and social ties to keep them healthier for longer. Many residents, particularly immigrants and BIPOC people are being gentrified and displaced out of their long-time homes. Learn about Virginia’s story.

More information on this year’s theme »

Land Acknowledgement

We thank the Wampanoag Nation and the Massachusett Peoples on whose lands we are guests. We also acknowledge that, through the Morrill Act of 1862, MIT benefited from the stolen territories of 82 Tribes including the Greater and Little Osage, Chippewa, and Omaha Peoples. For more information about this history, see the pathbreaking data journalism and visualization project, Land Grab University.

Acknowledgements

Material for this class has been adapted from classes taught by Jeffrey Heer at the University of Washington, Maneesh Agrawala and Michael Bernstein at Stanford University, Hanspeter Pfister at Harvard University, Tamara Munzner at the University of British Columbia, Jessica Hullman and Nick Diakopoulos at Northwestern University, Niklas Elmqvist at the University of Maryland, College Park, Enrico Bertini at New York University, and Sheelagh Carpendale at Simon Fraser University. Thanks also to Michael Correll. Lab materials were primarily developed by Lea Verou.

The class draws heavily on materials and examples found online, and we try our best to give credit by linking to the original source. Please contact us if you find materials where credit is missing or that you would rather have removed.