Student Outcomes

Data Viz with A Small Set of Personal Data and A Big Set of Data from Open Data Portals

Small Data

This project offers a new way of approaching data in a slower and analog way. By drawing our personal data, we use data to become more humane and to connect with ourselves and others at a deeper level. Students had a data penpal from another design course in Massachusetts and exchanged their data visualization outcome through mail for a semester. 

* The project was inspired by Dear Data.

The students were asked to collect their personal data using any activity mobile apps for about two months. This assignment is to teach them how to collect, analyze, and visualize data to inform others who don't know them and to realize their own habit. They were encouraged to explore non-traditional ways of visualizing data.

Big Data

The students were asked to visualize data to tell a story with Big Data. They choose a topic of their interest and find data through any Open Source data portals. The main goal of the project is to visualize data to helps people understand how the city has changed for the last decade, and what the current situation is, and ideally, we are able to suggest potential solutions or to offer insightful predictions for the future.