SIMS 247 Assignment 1

Due: Feb 5
Format to turn in: hardcopy or pointer to a url.

Last modified 2/5/98

Assignment 1:  Issued January 27, Due in class Feb 5

Format: either a hardcopy handed in at the beginning of class, or else e-mail to: hearst@sims indicating a URL which contains an html version of your assignment (no emailed word documents, please).

(A) Critiquing visualizations.

Read the following article describing experiments in evaluating web page access patterns:

     Tauscher, L. and Greenberg, S. (1997) How People Revisit Web Pages: Empirical Findings and Implications for the Design of History Systems. International Journal of Human Computer Studies Special issue on World Wide Web Usability, 47(1), p97-138, Academic Press.
     http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Redirect/grouplab/papers/97-HowUsersRepeat.IJHCS/RevisitArticle.html

Use principles and observations from Tufte, Kosslyn, and class lecture, as well as your own judgement, to assess and critique figures in this paper.

  1. Compare and contrast the features of Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 in terms both of their usefulness as suggested by the finding of the paper, and in terms of principles of graphical display.
  2. Consider Tables 1 and 2.  Can you think of something potentially misleading about their layout with respect to each other?
  3. Assess the portrayal of information in figures 5a and 5b.  What other standard graph techniques could be used to display the same information?   Draw examples of these.
  4. Critique figures 6a and 6b in terms of graphic display principles.  Draw examples of better, perhaps non-standard, ways to display the same information, and perhaps additional information as well.
  5. Figures 7 and 8 attempt to show some non-standard kinds of information.  How well do they succeed at their task?

     (NB: this article also serves as an example of how to do an evaluation of a user interface.)

(B) The SpotFire software package allows for interactive brushing and inking, filtering, and assignment of variables to axes for scatterplots and bar charts.

Read Chapters 1-7 of the SpotFire User Manual in preparation for the next assignment.  The manual is also accessible from the SpotFire menu (under Programs\Research & Analysis\Data Visualization on the SIMS NT accounts).

     NB: as is probably self-evident, you need only turn in something for part (A)