Overview

This unit aims to instruct students on the fundamental principles of information visualisation, and good design practices. Students will explore a wide range of visualisation idioms and develop the ability to create visualisations that empower users to understand real-world data sets.

Requisites

Prerequisites
COS80025 Data Visualisation

Rules:

Concurrent Pre-requisite
COS60010 Technology Inquiry Project
OR
Pre-requisite
COS60006 Introduction to Programming

Teaching Periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
29-July-2024
27-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
11-August-2024
Census date
31-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
13-September-2024
Results released date
03-December-2024

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Critically evaluate data visualisations and propose improvements based on an understanding of human perception and cognition and data visualisation design principles
  • Apply a structured design process to create effective visualisations within a research context
  • Create interactive data visualisations using real-world data sets
  • Effectively communicate and reflect on the design process for an interactive visualisation, including the choice of visualisation idioms and reasoning behind design decisions

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Face to Face Contact (Phasing out)
Lecture
2.00 12 weeks 24
On-campus
Class
2.00 12 weeks 24
Unspecified Learning Activities (Phasing out)
Independent Learning
8.50 12 weeks 102
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
AssignmentIndividual 10 - 20% 
Class ExercisesIndividual 10 - 20% 2,3,4 
ProjectIndividual 30 - 45% 1,2,3,4 
Research and Technical ReportIndividual 30 - 45% 1,3,4 

Hurdle

As the minimum requirements of assessment to pass a unit and meet all ULOs to a minimum standard, an undergraduate student must have achieved:

i) An overall grade of 50% or more.ii) At least 40% in the Research report Students who do not achieve (ii) will receive a maximum of 45% as the total mark forthe unit

Content

  • Introduction to data visualisation
  • Brief history of data visualisation
  • Data visualisation design guidelines, graphical integrity
  • Visual variables: marks and channels
  • Visualisation critique
  • Analysis of user tasks in visualisation usage
  • Introduction to Data Driven Documents (D3)
  • Data sets and types
  • Interaction: Manipulating view, Filtering
  • Data visualisation idioms
  • Colour theory
  • Human perception and cognition
  • Introduction to data visualisation research

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.