A5 for Digital Humanities and Data Science: Implementing Your Dashboard Designs

Due date: Jun 16 (23:55)

This assignment will have you make your dreams become reality! Take your designs from your previous assignment (A4) and develop them into concrete prototypes. You should document all your steps in a short report and submit your two dashboard implementations.

Learning objectives

• Understand how design sketches might not work on actual data
• Learn about iterative refinement from first designs to working prototypes
• Be able to articulate the issues to your users
• Use your set of design sketches to create a comprehensive visualization
• Describe how a visualization implements the various tasks
• Implement both visualization dashboards from A4
• Furthermore, explore the storytelling feature of Tableau and create data stories

Directions

1. Implement both dashboard designs from your previous assignment (A4) while focusing on the interaction between the views – Tableau's default techniques (e.g., color, interaction) might not always lead to the best solution.
2. Take the feedback you got on the previous assignment, and incorporate it into your prototypes.
3. Implement both of your designs as individual dashboards in Tableau. Please also explore the Storytelling feature of Tableau (for a short introduction see Intro 1 and Intro 2) and publish a data story for each dashboard on Tableau public that shows important findings you gained from your dashboard with at least 5 story points.
4. Document your process and findings as a report and upload all your results as well as the dashboards to Moodle (Jun 16).
5. Present your approach (Jun 25).

If you have not submitted low-fidelity design prototypes in the 4th assignment, you should include at least one low-fidelity design alongside this 5th assignment (you can use up to 500 words more than max. allowed). Describe and justify your design decision in this extra space and which tasks you solve with each view. Failure to provide at least one low-fidelity design in A4 or A5 will result in a deduction of points in A5.

Report

The short report (max. 1500 words) must contain the following sections:

• Motivation: Short reminder of the overall problem in your own words. List the tasks (from A4) your two user groups need to address; what are your designs, and how do they facilitate the work of your users?
• Prototyping / Design process: Describe the results of prototyping your designs as Tableau dashboards. What can be found in the data using your visualization systems? Did you have any visualization ideas that don’t work on the real data? If so why? If changes emerged during the prototyping process, describe the changes to your initial visualization designs.
• Implementation details: Describe your final implementations. Show a full-page screenshot of each dashboard, and list the separate visible views and their functionality (with links to where in the screenshot these views are visible). Describe how the implementations address the defined tasks, and your technical decisions regarding the implementations.
• Data stories: Please include links in your report to your data stories (published on Tableau Public with your existing account) consisting of at least 5 story points which guide a user through selected views of each dashboard. Describe what your data stories are about and what important findings they show.
• Discussion: What have you learned? What would you do different next time? Are your users able to solve the tasks you defined in the beginning? If so, how? If not, what issues did you experience?
• Conclusion: Summarize the report.

Update (June 5, 2024): Based on your feedback on the word limit (1500 words), we decided to allow supplemental material that can be submitted in addition to the report. Please provide the most essential information in the report within the 1500-word limit. If you feel like there is detail crucial to your prototype, that you don't find will fit within the given word limit, please use the supp material and refer to it specifically at the places where needed. The supplemental information should be submitted in a separate PDF file named "a12345678_supplement.pdf" (replace a12345678 with your u:account username) and reference it in your report. Still, the report should stand on its own. I.e., it can be understood without the supplemental material.

Grading

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

Report (40 points)

• Motivation (2.5 points)
• Prototyping / Design process (20 points)
• Implementation Details (10 points)
• Discussion (5 points)
• Conclusion (2.5 points)

Visualization Dashboards (2x30 points)

The basis for the evaluation are your implemented dashboards and defined tasks, along with the improvement suggestions given as feedback on A4. Each implementation will be graded according to:

• Functionality: the planned user tasks can be executed using the system (10 points)
• Usability: the system is intuitive for the users, the tasks can be executed with ease of use - effectively, efficiently and satisfactory (10 points)
• Data story (10 points)

You will get points for the report only when you submit working implementations. Failure to submit according to the instructions will result in a grade of 0%. The final implementations have to be submitted in addition to the report and should work as described in the report. Any serious discrepancies between the report and the final implementations will result in a grade of 0%, such as in the case that your report mentions features which your final dashboard implementations are lacking. Important: Please be aware that you will need to reach a minimum of 25% of the points on this assignment since this is one of the requirements to pass this course successfully.

Common Pitfalls

Please make sure that you avoid the following pitfalls. We will take points off for

• making the user scroll up/down
• inconsistent or inappropriate use of colors
• making the user switch between tabs
• use of drop-down menus (without strong justification)
• [un]readable labels
• using "_" in labels
• missing axis labels
• human [un]readable numbers
• if NULL/missing values are shown as zero
• inappropriate or missing interactivity between charts
• animation that is not well justified (and which alternatives were considered and rejected for what reasons)
• using popup views (without strong justification)

Presentation

You will give an introductory presentation of your prototypes and their functionality, and how they solve the tasks of your users.

More information about the presentations can be found here: Presentations

The presentation of A5 is a mandatory requirement for the successful completion of the course.

Submission instructions

Submit the PDF-report and exports of your Tableau workbooks in a single ZIP file on Moodle. Please also include links to the published data stories in your report.

Make sure that both of your workbooks include all necessary data. It is a good idea to try unzipping your file before submitting it to ensure that everything unzips properly and you do not lose points. Use the following naming scheme for your submission: "a12345678_A5.zip" - replace a12345678 with your student number (or u:account username). 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