Points to research and present

Landing page Introductory image - names of the presenters

Intro and quick tour of the Website: http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/ (Maira) About the website (who created this and when?) Intent/objectives (choice of name and why this topic?) What does the site illustrate? . Attacks by the drones . Emphasis on the victims . Recent News on the topic Types of visualization techniques used . Graph and chart types . Interactive Language of website (En + Fr)

Government data vs. NGO collected data Verified vs. observed/reported Open data vs. non-accessible

Bar chart - Interactive / Static Time Series - Distribution of Drone Strikes and Victims Victims Graph

Data Adjustment - what data is displayed.

• Framing
• Navigating
• Animating
• Sequencing

Data Presentation - how the data is displayed.

• Focusing: Brushing data, Linking data
• Annotating
• Orientating

• Event: Mouseover, Wheel Scroll
• Control
• Function

general impression: color, fonts, illustrations Graphics: Clean and Simple Choice of color (black, red, white, grey)

No geographical reference / maps example: https://googletrends.github.io/year-in-language/ Recommended Data Viz embed (Can you guys figure out how to embed this?)

<iframe src='https://googletrends.github.io/year-in-language/geo.html' frameborder='0'></iframe> No imagery (Could have displayed photos and videos that reveal the real human beings and their sufferings. Add more realistic elements and humanness) Ineffective use of news article (Could have shown excerpts of news and images)

1. Some other thoughts: Subjectivity: Is the intent political? If yes, does that affect the way story is being told? “This project helps to bring light on the topic of drones. Not to speak for or against, but to inform and to allow you to see for yourself whether you can support drone usage or not.” Is this really what’s happening? Target Audience: Language of website (En + Fr) no Urdu or other local languages. Who is it made for? International audience or the country’s citizens? Accessibility : The project includes links for sharing over the social media, which mobilizes distribution and opens up access to a wider audience.
   Transparency: provide links to data sources in the info page. However, these links don’t directly lead to the actual datasets - tabulated raw form of data that contains the greatest level of details.

2. Presentation Summary: Intent vs. What the website really does; What it does really well (Pros) What can be improved (Cons and Recommendation)

3. Pose a question for the audience.

List incidents chronologically Provide numeric data for each incident Convey a message regarding the shear of each incident Allow for comparison within incidents

Interactive Elements: Meant to interact with user, by hovering over the lines/traces we could read more data/ details of the incident. Not exactly interactive. Does not let the Changing color when selected, encouraging interaction and discovery by users to better explore the data themselves.

Design language (color, fonts, illustrations) Graphics: Clean and Simple Choice of color

No geographical reference (example: https://googletrends.github.io/year-in-language/ ) No imagery (example images: Websites using imagery effectively)

Source : The data primarily comes from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), a not-for-profit organization. It was manually collected by reporters on the ground and was publicized in news stories. The authors admit that estimates vary among different news sources. In dealing with such inconsistency, the authors made average out of the minimum and maximum of the estimated records.

The other data sources include New America Foundation where high profiles targets were sourced from, and Living Under Drones, Bing News API.

What data is displayed.

What is included, or excluded. A deep dive into the data. Move through different sequenced views of data.

Framing There is no affordance for customization on what data could be displayed at any given point. Universally, children, civilian, high profile, other appear together in the bar graph; children, civilian and other appear all at once in the mini pop-up window in time series graph and victim graph.

Navigating Expand and explore greater level of detail in the displayed data. Mini pop-up windows offer granularity.

Animating
The time series graph and bar graph come with an animated sequence, which reveals the shifting nature of the time frame, drone strikes and death toll in view at any given point. However, this sequence is only automatic, not manual. What’s more, when you land on the web page, the animation is automatically triggered. There is no way of control. It’s aesthetically pleasing to view; yet it doesn’t allow static exploration.

Sequencing As you navigate through the sequence, a narrative is constructed. Storytelling with data. It’s a guided experience. At the beginning. Manually controlled reveal/fade. Cinematic effects.

Moment of pauses - where scripts appear in the screen that highlight key events. It facilitates understandings about the numbers with the context of these events. It frames our interpretation of these data.

A predetermined different angle of analysis, through bar graph, time series to victim graph.

How data is displayed.

Focusing: What data is visually emphasized and how.

Focusing on Children and Civilians through the color of red across all graphs. What data is relegated in contrasting prominence or position.

“Brushing” data and “linking” data techniques are used here to apply focus filter, in the victim graphs. Mouseover the human-figured mark is used as a way to select. Then victims of the same occurrence stand out as a result of the lightening of the rest, or de-emphasis of the rest through washing out the original colors. Highlighting associated data across the charts.

Drone strikes were animated in strands of white smokes and the radiating red bubbles.

Annotating Annotated apparatus - the mni-windows of details - multiple layers of information. Reveal annotations in a local pop-up

Orientating Make better sense of your location within a display

Bar chart - Interactive / Static

• The categorization of groups (Children, Civilian, High profiles, Other) is ambiguous and non-exhaustive. A civilian, according to International Humanitarian law, is one not being a member of the armed services and does not take a direct part of hostilities in times of armed conflict. By definition, civilians include children.
• A huge chunk of the bar graph is taken up by Other (76.8%), and we have little idea of what Other entails. Considering this space of unknown is substantial, it’s necessary to address this part and add more clarity, by either digging up the database and categorize the groups further or interview the creator of the data, and add explanation to this: how it was created it, and what Other could scope. (The category of victims we call “OTHER” is classified differently depending on the source. The Obama administration classifies any able-bodied male a military combatant unless evidence is brought forward to prove otherwise. This is a very grey area for us. These could be neighbors of a target killed. They may all be militants and a threat. What we do know for sure is that they are targeted without being given any representation or voice to defend themselves.• )
• Though the numbers of attacks and victims increase as the time progresses, the overall length of the bar graph stays fixed and only the portions of respective victim groups changes. It’s a bit counter-intuitive as we see the numbers increase, the portions of victim groups shrink, as a result of fixed bar graph length.

Time Series - Distribution of Drone Strikes and Victims

Victims Graph

Event

Mouseover: In the time series graph, when you hover above a string of dots. In the victim graph, when you hover above a string of human-figured symbol.

Wheel Scroll: the victim graph, a vertical display of data, unfolds itself as you scroll down.

Control

The string of dots. The string of human-figured symbols.

Function

A mini window pops up. The window displays detailed information about a drone strike event that’s excerpted from a news article, with time, place, lede, and numbers