Assignment 5 Peer Review

In groups of 3–4, we’ll review the Assignment 5 submissions of your peers and receive feedback from them as well. The process will be largely similar to the one we followed for Assignment 3.

The goals of this assignment are threefold:

1. To use a systematic approach to provide constructive feedback to your peers about their visualizations.
2. To gain insights into others’ ideas given the same constraints as you, and to reflect on your own work.
3. To receive and reflect on constructive feedback about your own work, and to make improvements based on it.

Task

This is mostly identical to the process from the Assignment 3 peer review. New items are included in bold.

This is a synchronous, in-person activity that will take place during lab.

Begin by shuffling. Let’s start by grouping up with new people for fresh perspectives (as opposed to the folks with whom you’re working on teams).

We have an 80-minute-long lab session. Accounting for setup and group formation, let’s say we have 70 minutes of work time. Those 70 minutes should be distributed equally among each team member so that everyone can receive feedback from the group (so between 18 and 23 minutes per person, depending on how many people are in your group).

Once you have formed a group, take turns doing the following:

1. Each group member should show their Assignment 5 interactive vis to the rest of the group.
2. The rest of the group should then tell the presenter what they think the visualization is saying and they should take some time to explore the graphic using the provided interactions.
3. The presenter should tell the group what they meant to convey with the visualization and with the graphic’s interactive elements.
4. The whole group should then collaboratively discuss whether the graphic conveys the intended message (details below).

Throughout the discussion:

• One group member should be responsible for keeping the group on time and on task. They should take care that the time budget for each group member is not exceeded or severely under-utilised.
• Throughout this discussion, the presenter should take notes about the feedback they are receive (both positive and negative).

You will get an opportunity to make revisions to your Assignment 5 based on feedback. So it’s important that you take notes while your visualization is being discussed.

Go through the above cycle for each group member. You have the full lab session, so divvy up the time accordingly. You will benefit from your group members’ feedback, so you should extend the same attentiveness and thoughtfulness to them.

Critiquing visualizations

Consider the following questions when discussing a group member’s submission:

• Does the visualization (both the initial screen and the interactions) have a clear purpose?
• Was there a gap between what they were trying to say and what actually got communicated? Consider the Nested Model when considering whether the visualization met its goals.
• Does it use expressive and effective visual encodings?
• Was there a gulf between the interactions the creator intended to expose and the affordances perceived by a viewer?
• Does it use effective interaction idioms? (Overview first, then zoom & filter, then details on demand; overview + details in separate views; coordinated views; cross-filter, etc.)

I suggest that you focus your critiques around one or more of the following phrases:

• “I like…” (for positive feedback; also mention why you like what you like)
• “I suggest…” (for constructive feedback; this should tell you that it’s not enough to say you don’t like something: you need to suggest a way to improve it)
• “What if…” (for suggestions that are more open-ended, potentially half-baked ideas for extending the visualization)

You might also say

• “I wonder…” (for points of confusion you have about the visualization)

These are obviously not the only types of feedback you may have, but centering around these sentiments should help keep our reviews constructive.

Deliverable

In Canvas, submit a short write-up describing the feedback you received. This can happen after the lab session if needed. This is as much a note to me as it is a note to yourself, since you’ll reference this write-up when you work Assignment 3 revisions.

Your submission should include statements about each of the feedback items you received (including positive, negative, and “what if”-style feedback):

• What the feedback was; if appropriate, which level of the nested model was targeted
• If it was constructive feedback for improvement, what the suggested remediation was

For example:

It was not clear that points on my map needed to be clicked on to populate the chart next to it. The suggested remediation was to include a text label indicating the available actions.