Assignment 1: Data, Visualization, and Housing

This first assignment will give you a gentle introduction to the key ideas of this course: how can we use data and visualization to analyze, communicate, and ultimately affect policy around the housing affordability crisis.

Due: Mon 2/10, 11:59 pm ET
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Submit on Canvas (Assignments & Discussion Board) →

Table of contents

Part 1: Data Journalism on Housing

  1. Select two news articles from the list below.

  2. For each article, write a one paragraph comment. Your comment should not summarize the article. Rather, focus on analyzing both the topic of the article (i.e., the issues related to housing) and reflecting on the use of data and visualization to communicate the information. Here are some prompts to help spark your thinking:

    • What did you learn about housing from the article?
      • What do you appreciate about the arguments it is making, and what critiques or points of disagreement might you have? Why?
      • How did the article confirm or shift your prior understanding?
      • How did it help you identify and question assumptions you had been making?
      • How has the article changed (or not) your opinion or outlook on the topic?
    • How effectively (or not!) did the article use data and visualization to make its point(s)?
      • How well did visual design choices (e.g., chart type, colors, layout, etc.) help reveal the important features or trends of the underlying data in a straightforward fashion? Or how much work did you need to do to understand what is being shown?
      • If the visualization was interactive or animated, how did these bits of dynamic behavior help convey the takeaway message? Or were they more distracting than helpful? Was it clear how to begin interacting, and was performing the interaction satisfying or worth the effort?
      • What about the “smaller details”? For instance, how were titles, labels, and annotations used to help guide your attention to the key pieces of information, and help explain how to read the chart? Or were you/would you have preferred to have been left to your own devices?

  3. Post your comment to the Canvas discussion board under the thread corresponding to the article you are commenting on. You are welcome to structure your submission as either commenting on the article directly, or as a response to the points made by one of your colleagues.

News Articles

Please select two articles to comment on from the following list. Note, we have used “gift” links but these may expire—if you hit a paywall, please let us know via Slack and we will issue new links accordingly.

Part 2: Sketching Visualizations

Next, you will sketch (with pen and paper!) 3 visualizations of a small dataset and provide a brief reflection on your designs.

Why sketch? Why not just dive right into using some visualization tool? Sketching is a quick and cheap form of prototyping—a process of simulating how a finished product could look and work. Prototyping is a critical part of the design process as it allows us to test the feasibility of our ideas early on. But prototyping (and sketching, in particular) is also extremely helpful in generating ideas. Rather than grappling with the functionality and constraints of any given design tool (which can often influence your design process, even implicitly), or committing to any one specific design, sketching allows us to more rapidly explore the space of possible designs. And research has shown that prototyping several ideas in parallel often leads to better outcomes (Dow et al., 2011; Tohidi et al., 2006).

The Dataset: U.S. Population, 1900 vs. 2000

Every 10 years, the Census Bureau documents the demographic make-up of the United States, influencing everything from congressional redistricting to social services. This dataset contains a high-level summary of census data for two years a century apart: 1900 and 2000. The data is a CSV (comma-separated values) file that describes the U.S. population in terms of year, reported sex (1: male, 2: female)*, age group (binned into 5 year segments from 0-4 years old up to 90+ years old), and the total count of people per group. There are 38 data points per year, for a total of 76 data points. Numbers have been rounded to facilitate sketching.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau via IPUMS

The US Census Bureau is moving towards a less binary model for gender identity, as well as adding questions about sexual orientation.

Your Tasks

  1. Start by choosing a question you’d like a visualization to answer.

  2. Sketch 3 visualizations (with pen and paper!) that you believe effectively tackle the question and that each explore different and diverse design choices. Do not forget to include the title, axis labels or legends as needed.

  3. For each sketch, bullet point your rationale for your design decisions. What was your motivation behind generating this sketch? What were you hoping it would communicate? What worked well and what didn’t? What would you like to explore in the next sketch?

  4. Write one paragraph that reflects on all 3 of your sketches overall. Compare your designs with each other: what are their strengths and weaknesses? What new directions might you explore in the next phase (e.g., synthesizing elements from every sketch, or describing why one of them is significantly better than the others?).

  5. Compile your work (including sketches, bullet points, and writeup) as a single PDF and submit it on Canvas. Please make sure your images are sized for a reasonable viewing experience—readers should not have to zoom or scroll in order to effectively view your submission!

For this assignment, you should not analyze or visualize the data with visualization software such as Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau, ggplot2, matplotlib, etc. as these packages are likely to influence or constrain your design thinking. Instead, directly use the summarized dataset with rounded numbers shown above.

We do not expect your sketched visualizations to be “perfect” or “beautiful”: they need not include every data point, nor even precisely represent the data (that’s why we’ve rounded all data values to the nearest 50,000!). Instead, think of your sketches as drafts: they should communicate three high-level design ideas for how to answer the question visually. Your sketches should, nevertheless, be interpretable without consulting your write-ups.

Doing well in this part of the assignment does not require you to be artistic. Rather, high-scoring submissions will demonstrate a diverse range of designs and thoughtful reflection on the strengths and limitations of each sketch.

Tips & Inspiration

  • Have fun and experiment with a diverse ideas! What about different shapes and colors? Or perhaps simulating different textures (e.g., dotted patterns, cross-hatching, etc.)? Perhaps even trying out different icons or symbols?

  • Before you choose pink and blue to represent sex data - Do so with full knowledge of the critiques of this approach, which are described here along with suggestions for other color pairings.

  • Don’t use a pencil to sketch—not being able to “undo” your mistakes by erasing them can be remarkably conducive to generating designs.

  • Instead, use a sharpie/marker/felt-tip pen. Thick lines free you from worrying about the fine-grained details and accuracy of your sketch, and instead focus you on sketching the big picture ideas.

  • You may sketch on touchscreen-enabled devices (e.g., iPads) but we do not recommend them for the same reasons as using pencils—it’s too easy to hit “undo.”

  • For some additional inspiration:

Grading

This assignment is worth 10 points:

  • 4 points will be awarded for the news article comments. Each comment will be graded on a check-minus/check/check-plus scale according to the following rubric:

    • Check-minus (1/2): Surface-level engagement with the article including: summarizing the points made in the article, offering a high-level reflection without unpacking the “why”, relatively shallow analysis or critiques of the use of data and visualization, and other styles of comments that suggest only cursory readings of the article. Partially complete submissions may also earn a check-minus if appropriate.

    • Check (2/2): Effective engagement with the article. Comments awarded check grades indicate that they understand the main ideas of the article, and the reflections and analysis are reasonable with nontrivial observations worth surfacing. We expect most comments to be awarded checks.

    • Check-plus (3/2): Excellent engagement with the article. Check-plus grades are reserved for rare instances where a comment really hits on an interesting, unique, and insightful point of view. Generally only a few submissions for each article earn a check-plus.

  • 6 points will be awarded for the sketching visualizations:

    • 4 points will be awarded for the sketches:

      • 3 points will be awarded for the diversity of ideas explored—for example, did the sketches consider three very different designs, or were multiple sketches relatively similar?

      • 1 point will be awarded for the creativity of ideas explored—for instance, did the sketches largely retread the standard chart types, or did they move well-beyond the usual visual idioms?

    • 2 points will be awarded for crisp and thoughtful design rationales and reflection—for example, how well-documented are the design decisions, how well-analyzed were the pros/cons of each design, and how well does the reflection synthesize across the three sketches?