Assignment 2: Sketching

In this assignment, you will sketch three visualizations of a small dataset (using pen and paper only) as well as provide brief reflections of your designs. In our in-class workshop on September 17, you will gain some initial experience with sketching. This assignment provides additional practice that will be useful as you begin designing custom data analysis and visualizations for future assignments (and your final project).

Due: Tues 9/24, 11:59 pm ET
Submit on the class forum →

Table of contents

The Dataset: Pittsburgh Population, 1950 vs 2021

The U.S. Census Bureau documents the demographic make-up of the United States, and its data directly impacts how funding is allocated to communities for neighborhood improvements, public health, education, transportation and more US Census FAQ. This dataset contains a high-level summary of census data of the city of Pittsburgh for two years: 1950 (a significant time when Pittsburgh reached its peak population) and 2021 (the most recent data available). The data is a table that describes the Pittsburgh city population in terms of year, reported gender, age group (binned into different segments from 0-4 years old up to 65+ years old), and the total count of people per group. There are 16 data points per year, for a total of 32 data points.

Your Tasks

  1. Define a question that you would like visualizations to answer about this data set.
  2. Design 3 different data sketches that you believe effectively tackle the question. Each sketch should include:
    • Title
    • Axis labels (as needed)
    • Legend (as needed)
  3. Write one paragraph per sketch about the rationale for your design decisions. Each paragraph should include:
    • What was your motivation behind generating this sketch?
    • What were you hoping it would communicate?
    • What worked well and what didn’t?
  4. Write one summary paragraph that reflects on all 3 of your sketches overall. This paragraph should include:
    • What are the sketches strengths and weaknesses?
    • Which sketch would you recommend to be implemented? Or would you integrate facets from multiple sketches? If so, describe those merged facets

Sketches do not need to include every datapoint, or even precisely represent the data (which is also why data values are rounded to the nearest thousand). The goal of this assignment is to sketch different visualization designs. Sketches should not be “perfect” but instead each sketch should communicate a unique idea that you would plausibly be excited to continue exploring in a future assignment. We encourage you to use sharpies/markers/felt-tip pens so that your lines are thicker and you are less focused on being “accurate.”

Note: For this assignment, you should NOT analyze or visualize the data with computational tools. Instead, we expect you to simply look at the dataset and create hand-drawn sketches.

Grading

This assignment is scored out of a maximum of 10 points. We will determine scores by judging the relevance of your questions, the diversity of your sketches, the creativity of your ideas, and the crispness of your write ups.

You can be awarded a maximum of 3 points for each sketch and its related reflection. The remaining 1 point will be awarded for communicating your overall reflection across the 3 sketches as described in the above section “Assignment Tasks”.

Submission Details

This is an individual assignment. You may not work in groups.

Submit your assignment on Canvas. Compile your sketches and paragraphs as a single PDF file. Make sure your images are sized for a reasonable viewing experience — readers should not have to zoom, rotate, or scroll in order to effectively view any sketch!

Tips and Inspiration

  • Use a sharpie/marker. Thick lines free you from worrying about the fine-grained details and accuracy of your sketch, and instead focus you on sketching the big picture ideas.
  • Similarly, we recommend using pens over pencils — not being able to “undo” your mistakes by erasing them can be remarkably conducive to generating designs.
  • You are free to use different colors and any other sketching techniques you can think of (e.g., dotted patterns, cross hatching, etc.).
  • You may sketch on touchscreen-enabled tablets (e.g., iPads) but we do not recommend them for the same reasons as using pencils — it’s too easy to hit “undo.”

Acknowledgements

Components of this assignment were inspired by Arvind Satyanarayan’s Interactive Data Visualization course at MIT.