What you learned from the class in terms of personal (Dear Data) and public (data story) data collection, cleaning, and visualizing.
Collecting data is something I had never done before this class other than data sources for reports, essays and other cited work. I learned a lot about personal data collection such as tracking my data on a daily basis by consistently logging information when required to do so and setting up that data to be encoded into whatever iconography or data visualization I could come up with. I found the work challenging not only in the aspect of data collection but creating the encoded data visualizations. It required as much creativity as it required analytical thinking.
What did you learned from the class about technical (DataWrapper) vs. daily manual data visuals.
I realized encoding data, as well as collecting data was much more complicated than I expected. With all the secondary data sources out there, it wasn’t always easy to drill down to primary sources. Using Datawrapper was straight forward but challenging at the same time. The parameters have to be just right and if you are using excel you have to make sure that your inputs are correct and that Datawrapper can understand it to encode it correctly.
What did you like or dislike about each method?
I enjoyed using Data wrapper and I thought it’s a great data visualization tool, but I also feel like it needs to be refined. It shouldn’t be so difficult to sort out data in Datawrapper, and there should be more parameters set besides text, date, and numbers. I feel like the design team could implement more options that make it easier to use. I loved taking the time to make my own data visualizations with the dear data project. If I wasn’t so slammed with my day job, and was able to manage this course’s workload better I would have made some really awesome designs!
What do both of those final projects (Dear Data and the data story) teach you about how data can be used to tell a story?
They teach me the importance of collecting data from primary sources, how data can be used to not only inform, but educate and using a data driven story can even influence people.
How do you imagine using the skills learned in this class in the future?
Most certainly I will be using these kinds of methods during the research phase of UX/UI design. This class has taught me the fundamentals of putting my own data sets together, sourcing them properly and encoding that data into visualizations, something that would be highly beneficial to the UX research and design process.
Design By Angel Vazquez 