Note: I’m a graduate student at the University of Miami working on my capstone, a visualization of the Pictures of the Year International Archives. If you’re curious about my journey, here are my posts tagged with capstone.
The Fun Begins
So now that I have a better idea of what charts to make and have completed some tests to understand d3js I can start building charts and putting the website together in earnest. I also need to review CSSGrid and for that, I’ll look to Wes Bos.
Clean, Filtered Data
So, remember the data viz design process I shared? This is the filter and represent part of the process. But I needed to get even more organized so I created another master workbook with every filtered piece of data organized in a way that makes sense to me. It took awhile, but here it is:
From the above, I created CSV files to load for the D3 charts. It was easier for me to have a “master” where I could leave notes to myself than to create multiple CSVs. I’m sure my process and practice will evolve but for now, this has kept me sane.
Represent Data
Now that I have focus, its really about figuring out how best to represent the filtered data. Horizontal bars or vertical in a group of small multiples? Grouped bars or something more like a population pyramid? Using tools like RawGraphs and Flourish allowed me to quickly see if one was better than the other. I also shared these with my “committee” to get their initial reactions.
I’m starting to get excited about where this is going. You can see I’ve already started playing around with colors that aren’t the usual pink and blue!