Syllabus

Course Description

This course provides a hands-on introduction to designing effective data visualizations.

Chapters (WIP)

1. Introduction and motivation for course

Will cover examples illustrating the importance of designing effective data visualizations.

Students will be asked to pick 3 good and 3 bad examples from their fields and comment them (why they like or dislike them; at the end of the course they will redo that and maybe redesign one of them in Figma).

2. 10 principles for good data vizualization + data viz critique

I will present my 10 principles for good data visualization; we will review some graphs and critisize them together; based on work they’ve done in 1.

3. Data Viz Vocabulary

Picking the right type of graph for your data; know your data viz vocabulary

4. Colors and Fonts, Scales, titles

Tools; Testing you data visualization;

5. Introduction to Figma (with Sophie Doublet)

There are many tools for creating data visualization; we will use Figma to learn about how to draft a data visualization.

6. Software to make visuzlization

Presenting some tools/software for making graphs (e.g., ggplot2, D3); Cover other forms of visualization (e.g., dashboards, diagrams, visual explanations, infographics)

7. Redesign a graph: Before/After

Students are organized in groups and asked to work on particular data visualization projects.