Data Visualization

William James Hall, Harvard University

Tuesday 01/13/2015, WH1305, 10am-5pm

Karthik Dinakar

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

k...@media.mit.edu

The purpose of this workshop is to help you create visualizations for effective communication of statistical clinical science research. We will talk about the value of data visualizations and techniques to design and evaluate them. We will also explore the power and weight of narratives in communicating the core tenets of complex clinical research datasets and findings. Finally, we will use a WYSIWYG software package and practice creating some visualizations.

Introduction

10:00-12:00pm

Visualizations

Humans + computation in the loop
External representation and perception
Interactivity
Idiom design space
Tasks
Evaluation & effectiveness

Data Abstraction

Data types
Dataset types
Attributes
Semantics

Task Abstraction

Contextual Inquiry/Design
Actions
Targets
Analyzing and Deriving ✓

Validation

Four levels of design
Validation Approches
Examples

Concepts & Techniques

12:45-2:00pm

Tables & Trees

Arrange by keys
Arrange by values
Separate, Order, and Align
Spatial Axis Orientation
Spatial Layout Density

Color channels

Color theory
Colormaps
Other Channels

Interaction

View Manipulation
Navigation
Highlighting
Filtering & Sorting
Extraction of data

Narratives

Target-driven narratives
Visual Design, Messaging, Interactivity
Guide, highlight, interpret

Example design & critique

2:20-3:00pm

In this exercise, we will use a WYSIWYG free visualization tool to visualize a dataset step-by-step and by so doing get an introduction to the tool istself. We will then critique the visualization that was built.

Visualization Exercise

3:10-5:00pm

We will form teams with two participants per team. Each team will create visualization for a unique dataset using some of the concepts covered in the aforementioned sessions. We will reassemble at 4:40pm