Assignment Introduction
Today, we’ve looked at many examples of data visualization that takes advantage of the visual aspects of communication. As we’ve seen, visuals can be an extremely powerful way of quickly sharing information about a topic, reinforcing arguments you are making, or making complicated data more understandable.
Your task is to use visuals to make some aspect of data that you want to use in your paper as appealing to your readers as possible, using the strategies from this weeks’ reading and video. Your visual mode assignment should, as Moxley and Staggers describe, “tell a story or make an argument about complex data and concepts.”
Assignment Directions
There are many, many, many ways we might communicate our ideas using visuals. For this assignment, you have the freedom to decide on what kind of visual is most appropriate for your topic, argument, and the particular data you have.
You might, for example, make a bar chart, a pie chart, a bar graph, line graph, flowchart, illustration, visual layout, infographic, or other appropriate format of data visualization for your particular project.
Part One
For your assignment, please make a data visualization of your choice. You might use apps like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Canva, Venngage, or something else you are already familiar with to get started.
Your data visualization should contain whatever information you think is most important for your argument and should use the format that you think is most powerful for your argument.
(Note: I do not expect you to be graphic designers! Please just make the cleanest, most useful document that you can).
Part Two
After you’ve made your data visualization project, please write a paragraph of 4-6 sentences explaining the choices you made. What kind of visualization did you make? Why does it look like this? Why did you include the information you chose? Why did you leave out the information you decided wasn’t necessary? Why?