Part 1 – Keeping it Honest: How Not to Lie with Pictures assignment
What mistakes did you not think of before that you might want to avoid?
I realized that I did not pay much attention to colors, and had no idea how the well-thought-out use of colors could help readers understand visualizations better. I have a tendency to use default color palettes whenever I make graphs; however, from now on, I will make sure to use appropriate colors for qualitative/quantitative data, and also avoid using too many colors and confusing colors like neon.
What examples might you like to emulate for your own projects?
Animated graphs are something I would love to incorporate into my projects. Compared to static visualizations, I think dynamic visualizations like animated graphs can effectively draw the audience’s focus and lead their eyes to specific points on graphs.
Part 2 – Lecture Reflection
What are some things you to keep in mind or to avoid as you consider data viz best practices for DH projects?
I really enjoyed Lin’s lecture! One of the things I learned from her lecture is the importance of constantly thinking about how to best present your data. Considering that your audience probably do not have as much contextual information as you think they do, it is always important to make sure your graphs are clear and easy to understand.
Animated graphs would be really cool to play with! I agree that theyre a great way to capture the audience’s attention. Interactive charts would also be really cool to experiment with too, i think that when you encourage audience participation, they will be much more invested in the information, and better able to learn from it.
Hi Erika, nice post! I also never thought carefully about the effect of color in data visualization. I like your idea of using animated graphs, they seem harder to build, but I think it is worth it.