Open Scholarship Summer Series: Data Visualization

Introduction

Welcome to the Open Scholarship Summer Series! My name is Negeen (she/her) and I am a data visualization librarian at the UW Libraries. This summer session ran through August 9-13, 2021 and was hosted by the University of Washington Libraries Open Scholarship Summer Series program. This session was intended to be an introduction to data visualization for all disciplines. The materials have been updated to fit an asynchronous, on demand model spread over about five days.

This session is not meant to be a comprehensive course on data visualization and many of the suggestions here (and that you may come across in other data visualization spaces/workshops) are not hard and fast rules. Feel free to push outside of the boundaries presented in this session and experiment! Critical thinking and inclusive approaches are the best tools when creating visualizations.

Topic overview

This session will cover the basics of data visualization, including:

• Day 1
  • What is data? What is data visualization?
  • Types of data
  • Why visualize?
  • Chart types
  • Gestalt principles
  • Sketching/planning a visualization/data storytelling
• Day 2
  • Structured/unstructured data
  • Data cleaning
  • File formats
  • Finding data
  • How to use the data visualization tool for this session (Datawrapper)
• Day 3
  • Inclusive data visualization
  • Icons and images
  • Language
  • Order
  • Visual spaces/colors
  • Mapping
• Day 4
  • Accessibility and data visualization
  • Project work time
• Day 5
  • Project work time