Week 5: Visual Connections

I have always been a visual learner. Flash cards with bright colors and images were not only beneficial for my academic pursuits, but were an outlet for me to creatively express myself through my studies. I pursued my artistic abilities early in high school through the outlets of photography and music, further extending myself into the realm of the arts, while pushing father and father away from the left side of my brain. In reading Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display, I was reminded of the growing disparity between humanities scholars and the “scientific world.” Although it seems that collaboration between the two fields could lead to greater findings and realizations, the fact of the matter is, the learning styles and ontologies between these fields are so different because of a fundamental dissimilarity in the basics of understanding capta. The creation of data visualizations attempt to bridge this gap and provide a balance of art and algorithm so both end-users find this data as helpful tools in scholarly research.

Constructing data visualizations allows individuals to interpret data in an alternative form that has the potential to heavily influence its users. Data is unbiased in nature, however, the inherent assumptions humanities scholars have when constructing these graphs and visualizations weigh a considerable bias on the interpretation of the module. Regardless of the unavoidable biases, data visualizations help to create more context and evidence for a multitude of purposes from historical studies to competitive analysis to even determining the factors that influence and attract individuals to certain food truck locations (the latter is a real example from our final project).

After looking at the various visualizations provided in this week’s readings, I thought back to a friend of mine who is currently a student at Stanford in the Product Design & Engineering school, as well as an active member of the Design for America program. Her website promotes her unique thinking process, her design skills, her marketing and communication skills, her successful work experience, and of course, her charming personality. I selected a segment of her website that highlights her design thinking and saw a variety of clean and aesthetically pleasing visualizations that she had created for a project about the homeless in California.Screen Shot 2014-11-03 at 1.06.56 PM Screen Shot 2014-11-03 at 1.09.22 PMScreen Shot 2014-11-03 at 1.07.13 PMNot only has she created visualizations for various projects and job experiences, but also, she creates logos, pamphlets and other designs for her other extracurriculars. I am so beyond impressed with Katie’s ability to communicate with people so clearly and effectively through the medium of data visualizations and design, and she gives me hope that the world of humanities will continue to become a more prominent and important part of our society.