CS 448B Visualization

Stanford CS course on data visualization techniques (Fall 2021)

Location: Huang Eng. 18
Time: MW 11:30am-1pm


Final Project

Project Proposal Due: Wednesday Nov 03, 2021 by 11:30am
Design Review and Feedback: 10th week of quarter
Final Code and Video Due: Friday Dec 10, 2021 by 11:59pm

Purpose

The purpose of the final project is to provide hands-on experience either (1) analyzing a data set and producing visual explainer for it, or (2) developing a visualization research project.

  1. Data analysis/explainer projects involve analyzing a data set that has not previously been analyzed extensively, and producing an interactive visual explainer of the most interesting findings you uncover in the data set (in the style of the pudding.cool or the New York Times).

  2. Research projects involve making a novel contribution to the domain of visualization and typically include developing a software artifact or a user study/evaluation of a visualization technique.

Projects will be carried out by a team of up to 3 people. For data analysis/explainer projects the final implementation deliverable is interactive article containing at least three substantially different interactive charts with accompanying text written in the form of a journalistic article and a short video demo (up to 2 min long) explaining the work. For research projects the final deliverable will be an implementation of the proposed solution and a short video demo (up to 2 min long) explaining the work.

The first step is for you to identify the type of project (data analysis/explainer or research) and the specific topic you will work on. We would like you to write these up as a project proposal which is due on Wednesday Nov 03, 2021 by 11:30am. Each group will then be responsible for presenting the project in draft form to the teaching staff in the 10th week of the quarter. This design review will give you a chance to obtain feedback on the work and prepare for the final deliverables which are due on Friday Dec 10, 2021 by 11:59pm.

Suggested Project Topics

To get you started in thinking about project ideas we have posted a few final project suggestions for you to consider. These are roughly grouped into data analysis/explainer project ideas and research project ideas.

In addition, Edward Tufte’s site and particularly his notebooks are full of ideas that would make good class projects. If you are interested in conducting human subject experiments, Stephen Few has put together a collection of possible questions to explore. If you are interested in doing a research project we encourage you to go beyond these ideas and consider defining the research yourself (or with your team) and then proposing it to us.

Deliverables/Schedule

Project Proposal Due: Wednesday Nov 03, 2021 by 11:30am

As a first step you should create a project proposal that includes the names of the members of your group and a short (about 2 paragraph) description of the data analysis/explainer or research project you plan to work on. For an explainer project you should think about the dataset and the types of interactivity you plan to support. For a research project you should try to describe the problem you will address and your overall approach. You should submit the proposal via Canvas.

Upload your final project proposal to Canvas.

Design Review and Feedback (10th week of qtr)

In the 10th week of the quarter we (the teaching staff) will review your project to provide feedback on the project and help you prepare for the final presentation. It is fine if your project is not yet in a fully “complete” state, but by this point you should have made substantive progress, including working (if still rough) prototypes of your main visualizations and interactions.

You should prepare a short presentation of your work focusing on a demo. More information on the timing of these presentations will be posted as we get closer to the 10th week.

Final Project Code and Video Due: Friday Dec 10, 2021 by 11:59pm

The final deliverables include:

  • Code: an implementation of your project. If your project is a data/analysis explainer or you developed a website as a key part of your research, please also post a link to a running version of your site. If you have questions about how to serve your site please talk to us right away.

  • Video: a 2 minute video demo (with voiceover) exlpaining your project. If it is a data analysis/explainer project it should demo the interactions in the visualizations and describe your main findings. If it is research project the video should demo the imnplementation or describe the experiment you ran.

Submission: You should submit your final deliverables (access to a running executable and a zip file of the code, or a link to a github repository as well as the video) via Canvas.