DM878: Visualization

Study Board of Science

Teaching language: Danish or English depending on the teacher
EKA: N340072112, N340072102
Assessment: Second examiner: None, Second examiner: External
Grading: Pass/Fail, 7-point grading scale
Offered in: Odense
Offered in: Autumn
Level: Master

STADS ID (UVA): N340072101
ECTS value: 5

Date of Approval: 12-05-2020


Duration: 1 semester

Version: Archive

Entry requirements

None

Academic preconditions

Students taking the course are expected to have basic programming skills.

Course introduction

Visualizations are important means for experts in various domains (e.g., social sciences, bioinformatics, digital humanities, sports) to get an overview of data distributions and insight on prevalent data patterns in a comprehensible, intuitive, visual form. The aim of the course is to enable the student to develop appropriate visual interfaces for (domain-specific) user tasks. This is important as many students will be employed in sectors that may demand for visual data exploration solutions.

The course builds on competences in programming and data structures acquired in a bachelor education, and it gives an academic basis for preparing a master thesis with a focus on visual data analytics.

On completion of the course students should have gained knowledge on:
  • Methodologies for visualization design
  • Vision and human perception
  • Data and task abstraction for visual design
  • Visual encoding and interaction means 
On completion of the course students should have acquired the skills to:
  • Assess user requirements for visual design
  • Develop visual interfaces for a multivariate data set
  • Apply interaction means to support interactive visual data exploration
  • Validate the effectiveness of visualization solutions 
On completion of the course students should be competent to:
  • Abstract domain specific visualization tasks
  • Adapt existing solutions to support related visualization tasks
  • Develop new visualizations for unsupported user tasks
  • Argue data features on the basis of visual patterns

Expected learning outcome

The learning objective of the course is that the student demonstrates the ability to:
  • Explain visual design approaches for arbitrary user tasks
  • Select appropriate visual features for mapping data features
  • Explain and apply appropriate state-of-the-art visualization methods
  • Evaluate the quality of and suggest improvements for visual mappings
  • Solve visual design tasks in teams

Content

The following main topics are contained in the course:
  • Nested model for visualization design
  • Vision and human perception and their influence on visual design
  • What types of data can be visualized? (data abstraction)
  • Why do we need to visualize? (task abstraction)
  • How do we visualize? (visual encoding)
  • Means of interacting with visual representations
  • Information seeking and visual analytics
  • State-of-the-art visualizations for numerical, textual, geospatial, temporal and network data

Literature

See Blackboard for syllabus lists and additional literature references.

Examination regulations

Prerequisites for participating in the exam a)

Timing

Autumn

Tests

Group project

EKA

N340072112

Assessment

Second examiner: None

Grading

Pass/Fail

Identification

Full name and SDU username

Language

Normally, the same as teaching language

Examination aids

To be announced during the course.

ECTS value

0

Additional information

The prerequisite examination is a prerequisite for participation in exam element a).

Exam element a)

Timing

Autumn

Prerequisites

Type Prerequisite name Prerequisite course
Examination part Prerequisites for participating in the exam a) N340072101, DM878: Visualization

Tests

Oral presentation

EKA

N340072102

Assessment

Second examiner: External

Grading

7-point grading scale

Identification

Student Identification Card

Language

Normally, the same as teaching language

Examination aids

Not allowed. 

ECTS value

5

Additional information

The exam is based on a visualization project that will be conducted throughout the semester. The group project is required as a basis for the exam. Around mid of the semester, students will choose or will be assigned a visualization project. During the exam, project results are presented and questions on the project are posed to the group. Afterwards, each student will be checked individually on the general knowledge on visualization gained during the semester.

The examination form for re-examination may be different from the exam form at the regular exam.

Indicative number of lessons

36 hours per semester

Teaching Method

The teaching method is based on three phase model.
  • Intro phase: 24 hours
  • Skills training phase: 12 hours (tutorials for project discussions)
Activities during the study phase:
  • Solving the project assigments
  • Self study of various parts of the course material.
  • Reflection upon the intro and training sections.

Teacher responsible

Name E-mail Department
Stefan Jänicke stjaenicke@imada.sdu.dk Institut for Matematik og Datalogi

Timetable

Administrative Unit

Institut for Matematik og Datalogi (datalogi)

Team at Educational Law & Registration

NAT

Offered in

Odense

Recommended course of study

Profile Education Semester Offer period