Kim Henze

Jessica + Miranda

First off, I thought your topic was a great choice: meaningful, interesting, and data-driven. I have to give you praise, too, for the added step of pulling data yourselves from Goodreads, WorldCat, Novelist, and Wikipedia rather than working with an existing dataset -- it allowed you to cater to areas of interest and explore (and resulted in compelling connections).

One of my favorite elements was the publication map because it raises so many unexpected questions (like the Argentina bit we talked about in class). You adeptly navigated the issue of the US having so many more publications by including another map without the US, which gives a much more dynamic scale for the other countries (with the blue and white as a solid thematic design choice for a Jewish topic). The fiction vs. nonfiction and adult vs. YA are also great questions rendered articulately.

Because you have so much information and so many visualizations (which is great), I think the project would benefit from some sort of progressive narrative at each step through the tabs -- I realize, though, that this is far from easy in Tableau's formatting options and isn't a part of the actual assignment. My other suggestion would be to separate affiliation and gender (or maybe pair them with another attribute of the author) because when it's just the two of them, it looks like you're trying to make an argument about correlation between gender and affiliation (which I don't think you are?). Overall, it was superb :)

Anne

Bravo for all the impressive data scraping/finagling. One thing that I wanted in all the other visualizations was an overarching narrative/tentative thesis for exploration, and you provided it clearly and conveniently in the website. I also appreciated the super-intriguing topic)!

The state names over time map w/ slider is great because it allows for so much information to be very-clearly displayed (and played with) at once through spatial, temporal, AND number of mentions. I also thought the basic chart of stats that you included at the very end of the website was also helpful. We talk a lot about dynamic visualizations, but as a reader, it was really helpful just to see those numbers clearly curated out for me.

One suggestion I'd make is that for the map of relative popularity over time, it might be helpful to use more divergent colors for the decades. Because they're on a single-hue range, I first thought they were marking the severity/intensity of a variable over time. At the same time, the single hue allows for quick and easy comparison once I realized darker = newer. Maybe a double hue color scheme to connote change without implying intensity? Your choice might be best, though. Overall, it was stellar :)