information design report pew trust core trends in technology and the internet

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Description

This project asks you to engage with data, present data for a specific audience, and practice making effective data visualizations. The project focuses on

  • the fair, accurate, and ethical use of data
  • the conventions of writing with numbers and data
  • how to integrate figures into a document
  • how to design effective visualizations.

Audience and purpose are central to the goal of the final deliverables. As you will learn in completing this project, numbers don’t speak for themselves, and writing with data requires critical and rhetorical thought, as well as visual design skills.

In working on this project, you will engage with different types of visuals, as well as the conventions of writing with data and numbers. To achieve these goals, you will select one of the data sets listed below. After reviewing the data set you select, you will decide on a point you want to make for a specific audience using the data in your data set. You will then make decisions about which data to visualize from the larger data set and you will create three data visualizations help you make your point. Then you will write about and analyze that data in a final visual report of one page. The final visual report you create will include the three visuals you have made, and the supporting text necessary to explain the data you have visualized and make your point.

In addition to the visual report, you also will create a second deliverable. You also will compose a reflective memo that explains your choices and goals, and how the visual report deliverable achieves them.

In addition to your the textbook chapter on Visual Design, you may which to use this Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. to explore various types and uses of visuals.

Data visualizations bring a number of benefits to any professional document, even short ones:

  • Though they have become extremely easy to make, people in the workplace still tend to be impressed by the extra effort and thoughtful presentation implicit in making a visualization.
  • Data visualizations also help to make the work of digesting and interpreting data more efficient by displaying trends or illustrating the significance of specific information without poring over page after page of numbers.
  • Because of this efficiency, visual elements are also better at communicating certain ideas more quickly than words or tabular data. Something that may take many sentences to communicate, a sudden drop in the efficiency of a process, or a surge in sales among a certain demographic, are instantly recognizable as spikes or dips along the X axis of a line graph.

For example:

This short report from the Department of Education provides an overview of literacy and numeracy for men and women. In this online short report, the authors created two bar charts that are designed to show relationships between data and then they briefly explain the importance of the data.

In your visual report, you will create three visualizations and integrate them into your report, providing an introduction to the topic and analysis of the data you include to make a point about the topic using your data.

Assignment

For this project, you will select a data set from the ones listed below and create a short informational report that includes at least three data visualizations that you create and that you feel best communicates the data you select from your data set in a form that maximizes the impact of the data to suit a specific audience and purpose.


Informational Report

A one-page, informative, visually interesting report that makes a point about your subject using the data in your data set. This report should incorporate at three visuals that you have created along with a discussion/analysis of the data in your figures. The text in your report should

  • introduce the topic and its importance
  • explain the meaning of the visuals
  • point to the conclusions suggested by the data.

You should think through and identify a clear audience. Your understanding of the audience informs how the data is presented, the form the visualizations take, and the point you use the data to make, as well as the overall purpose of the document.