Final Project Details

Project Writeup

Due Dec 12 at 5pm. The writeup should appear as or linked to the default page in your Infoviz project directory.

Your Final Project writeup should include (not necessarily in this order; you can reuse descriptions from your project proposal):

• Title of project
• Name(s) of student(s) involved
• Project goals, including what kinds of tasks the interface containing the visualization is targeted towards. (Include if this is analysis, presentation, both, or other.)
• Discussion of related work. This should be more thorough than what appeared in your proposal. Describe related work both in the domain you are tackling and in related visualizations that you considered (sometimes these are the same, but often not).
• Description of your visualization and/or analysis. This should include well-sized screenshots or other illustrations. This should include:
  • Description of the data (if any) that was used.
  • Discussion of the use of visual properties.
  • Discussion of how this visualization provides insight on the problem (or if it doesn't work, what the issues are).
• The results of your informal usability study, including:
  • Number of participants, how they were recruited, basic demographics.
  • Description of the tasks you gave them.
  • Description of their responses to the interface. These can be primarily subjective, but can also include quantitative measures if appropriate.
  • If there is an alternative interface for the problem you studied, do they prefer the new design or the alternative?
• What kinds of results you did not achieve but which you would have liked to have the time or tools for.
• Which tools were used to accomplish the goals.
• Link(s) to visualization code if appropriate.
• Link to a thumbnail I can use for the projects page.

Project Expectations

For design projects, the design must follow good information visualization practices, as we've discussed all semester in class. These projects should take into account the proper use of visualization components such as color, size, position, animation, and so on. I will be very unhappy with improper use of visual properties.

Applications of visualization to analysis or presentation problems should attempt to take usability issues into account, and should help the user achieve insight on the underlying data or problem that was not possible without the visualization. By insight I mean making the non-visible visible, or showing trends or patterns or outliers or missing information, or by presenting the underlying information in a more understandable way.

If you're inventing a new kind of visualization, it might be that the underlying results are not entirely successful. That is ok, but be sure to follow good design principles and thoroughly discuss what did and did not work in your design.

Project Grading

• Class presentation (must fit within designated time limits) (10%)
• Quality of final writeup (40%)
• Quality of actual project (50%)

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