Week 6’s workshop focused on the different ways to visualise data. I found it particularly useful in terms of my assignment and it gave me a few ideas of how I would want to assess the data that will be displayed on my website.
This week we were asked to examine a few different types of websites that create data visualisations in different ways and consider some questions. My favourite of the ones we were asked to look at was ‘The Preservation of favoured traces’ website which visually demonstrates the expansion that Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ throughout its various editions. While the visualisation was less useful for knowing exactly what was being added (especially as you could only see what was being added if you hovered over the different sections) it gave a really good overview of where sections were added and expanded upon as the science behind it developed.
This was also the week I was introduced to Silk which I went on to eventually use as my website host. And made me think about how I wanted to display the data. The various examples that were used this week helped me to make some decisions in terms of what I wanted to use. I was given a lot of food for thought this week as it forced me to think about the aims of my final assignment and about what I wanted to achieve.
