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November 25, 2020

Scrollytelling and Getting Started with Data Phys

We’ve welcomed chilly November, and we have come a long way into the semester.

But first, Isabel Gomez takes us back to October...

During the month of October, Communicating with Data students were tasked with creating a scrollytelling project in pairs. “Scrollytelling” is a technique used to step through a longer story using data visualization. In our case, we used slides to add pictures and texts to create a cohesive story. This project highlighted the iterative process and collaboration.

Bar chart representing the average rankings of female rappers organized in ascending order of ranking. Name of rap artists on the left hand side, red color depicts female rappers, blue/green color represents overall male average ranking and orange color represents overall female average ranking.

Here's one visualization from a storyboard about rap rankings. See Isabel and Madison Williams' whole storyboard based on the rap Tidy Tuesday data here.

Sanjana Sunder tells us all about November...

The last few weeks have been quite a ride. We completed our last Data Wrapper Lab, this time making maps of accessible pedestrian signs found in New York City’s Boroughs. We also discussed feminist artwork by the Guerilla Girls, which was showcased by Charlene Shang Miller. This artwork combined statistics and art to reveal sexism in the art world in a striking, yet data-driven way. We also completed our last Dear Data project where we could pick the topic we were interested in presenting.

Drawing of an oval shaped table with title “How Many Times I Ate (in a week).” Has several kitchen utensils such as plates, bowls and cups  on the table and pots and bags below the table to represent the different kinds of foods eaten that week. By Rana Gahwagy

A multi-dimensional visualization made with clay, cotton, yerba and paper to represent the intake of drinks in a given week. By Camila Maldonado

Now we are focusing on Physical Data, and how we can create a tactile representation of data. These tactile graphs, “data phys”, are being created using the kits we were provided by the Design Thinking Initiative. In preparation for a bigger project, we practiced rapid prototyping to turn a digitial graph into a physical one.

Ratie Vushe will tell us more...

For a rapid prototyping activity, the class was divided up into breakout rooms. Working with data on the Global Land-Ocean Temperature index, even-numbered rooms designed a visualization for people with visual impairments, and odd-numbered rooms designed a visualization for children. We created our prototypes using a variety of materials (straws, beeswax, fabric, etc) provided by the Design Thinking Initiative.

Emma Scott’s Prototype for People with Visual Impairments

Most groups designing for people with visual impairments focused on designing tactile and intuitive prototypes.

Nellie Wisnia’s Prototype for Children

Most groups designing for children focused on drawing the attention of children by using bright colors, making the prototypes interactive eliminating overwhelming detail.

Our current task is to display Smith College demographic data. Stay tuned for examples of our rapid prototypes and final products built with help from Eric Jensen and Dale Renfrow from the Center of Design and Fabrication.

*This newsletter was edited by Emma Kornberg.

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