A4 for Digital Humanities and Data Science: Low-Fidelity Design

Due date: May 14 (23:55)

An international COVID-19 task force group is looking for skilled visualization experts to evaluate a broad set of COVID-19 infection and vaccination data: This group consists of experts from various professions who want an informative tool to help them with various tasks. Study the dataset (available here) and its characteristics first. Focus on the data between 2020 and 2022. Below you can see the description of two future users of your interactive tool and some goals they want to achieve in their work:

A public health expert studying the vaccination efforts across different countries and the corresponding effects on national infection rates.
A government official studying how different risk factors and development indicators in the population (e.g., cardiovascular death rate, Diabetes prevalence, extreme poverty, share of smokers, hand washing facilities, life expectancy) affect the disease rates.

Your dashboard designs should respond to these requirements and support the work of both user types.

Directions

Submit a PDF report containing the following (max 8 pages):

We are expecting you to present two different dashboard designs. Each one must contain at least 4 different views and 3 different visualization types (scatterplot, histogram, map, etc.) for different facets of the dataset. For each design, please report on how the visualization or interaction contributes to a task outlined earlier. Refer each plot explicitly to one (or more) of the tasks you identified before.

We recommend using paper prototypes for this phase. Paper prototypes have the advantage that you are only limited by your imagination as to what is possible. If you have a novel visual encoding then feel free to include it!

Describe the two types of users in more detail and characterize the dataset in detail (interesting features, missing values).
Perform a detailed task analysis: Describe the goals and tasks of the two user types. Subsequently, reframe the users' task from domain-specific tasks into abstract form. Check out Chapter 3 in Munzner's book, especially the section on "why" a task is performed. Each task should have a number and your report should connect each view to one or multiple tasks.
Design two dashboards – each one supporting the tasks of both users – with multiple linked visualization components and describe the interactions between these individual components. Try to find different ways to solve the tasks – the idea is to explore the space of potentially useful solutions with the help of these two dashboard designs. Please avoid basing your second dashboard design on the first one (e.g. design one and then an obvious sub-standard one) as this might result in a deduction of points.
To kickstart your creativity, the Five Design Sheet Methodology by Roberts et al. could serve as an inspiration: FdS. If you decide to use the FdS Methodology, include only the last page - the realization design - into the maximum 8 pages of the report and add the remaining 4 pages (8 total for both designs) to the document as an appendix.
For each dashboard, argue why you have chosen a specific visualization for each task at hand. Describe how the visualizations are interconnected.
Compare both dashboards and individual visualizations to each other. Select one dashboard over the other and provide solid reasoning supporting your final choice.
In your conclusion, think of the following: What do users get done efficiently and fast with your design? What is it good at?

Grading

The grading will be as follows (100 points total):

Data, users, and tasks (25 points): Please create a detailed description of your users, enrich the information about the 2 distinct users mentioned above, and of their corresponding tasks (min. 4 tasks total). Give a detailed data description (interesting features, missing values, etc). To help your users do their jobs, you should verify that your data selection supports the requirements of their tasks. For example, you could load the data into Tableau and inspect the data closely (inspect given features, missing values, etc.).
Task abstraction (6 points): Reframe the users' task from domain-specific language into an abstract form, using action-target descriptions (see Chapter 3 in Munzner's book, or task lecture (link)). Each task should have a number assigned so that you can easily refer to it in the following sections to argue which visualization supports which task.
Designs (22 points each = 44 points): Design two dashboards – each one supporting the tasks of both users – with multiple linked visualization components. Please describe and illustrate each view – as well as the overall dashboards – and describe the interactions between their individual components. For the illustrations, you can use a drawing tool or paper & pencil, which has the advantage that you are only limited by your imagination as to what is possible. Each dashboard must contain at least 4 different views, with at least 3 of them being different visualization types.
The overall idea is to develop two different dashboard design solutions for the same problem. For each dashboard, argue why you have chosen a specific visualization for each task at hand (use the numbers from Section 2). Be sure to describe how you will use interactivity and linking between the views. If there is no linking between the views within a dashboard there will be points deducted.
Comparison (20 points): Compare both dashboards and the respective visualizations to each other. Select one dashboard over the other and provide solid reasoning supporting your final choice. Here we are looking for good argumentation about the various designs' strengths and weaknesses with regard to the tasks – but also with regard to the design principles discussed in class: How did you balance the most effective visual encodings with the number of attributes in the data? Which views are overview views, and which are detail views? What tradeoffs in interactions did you make? How does each dashboard link its views?
Conclusion (5 points): Please argue and summarize, based on the design principles and tradeoffs discussed in class and on your comparison above: Which of your two designs do you think is the best – and why? Also, try to address the following questions: What do users get done efficiently with your design? What is it good at?

Failure to observe the submission instructions will result in a grade of 0%.

Submission instructions

Submissions should be done via Moodle

Please use this template and submit it as a pdf file named “a12345678_A4.pdf” - replace a12345678 with your student number - to Moodle. We will deduct points for submissions that do not follow this naming convention.

Late submission

Late Submissions are possible, you have a total of five grace days for all assignments. After these days are used up, remaining assignments must be submitted on time.

Academic Honesty