Visual Analytics (602AA)

• Salvatore Rinzivillo (rinzivillo [at] isti [dot] cnr [dot] it)

• MS Teams Channel: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3A1ZTsvu9uzKVbLmT2k1ciZalFtJDDUMuSeP4o-jm0kyw1%40thread.tacv2/conversations?groupId=ca5c9820-6967-4058-b18a-1ceee2ef8827&tenantId=c7456b31-a220-47f5-be52-473828670aa1
• Telegram channel: https://t.me/+6PTkOzAWcWswMWI8
• All source code of exercises are available at the URL: https://github.com/va602aa-master

• Monday, 14:00 - 16:00, Room C1
• Thursday, 16:00 - 18:00, Room C1 11:00 - 13:00, Room L1

Given the conflict of schedule with other course, please vote for your preferred alternative slots for our Monday and Thursday lessons at the link shared in the telegram channel.

To keep updated with the last news of the course, subscribe at the Telegram channel: https://t.me/+6PTkOzAWcWswMWI8

• 2026-02-26: Due to the flu, today's lesson is cancelled.
• 2026-02-26: from March 5th, the lesson will be held from 4 PM to 6 PM, in Room C1

Students will be admitted to the exam after the registration on the website http://esami.unipi.it. The exam consists of a discussion of the project. It is mandatory to submit a short report (6-10 pages) within the deadline by mail to the instructor, specifying the tag “[VA]” in the subject.

Planned dates:

• Please log on to the portal for registration to get the next dates

The final project should have the following requirements:

• The application should contain several visual widgets, each providing insights on a selection of dimensions of the original data
• It is possible to use state-of-the-art charts (bar charts, line charts, etc.) and libraries (plot.ly, vega, etc).
• The final evaluation will take into account the implementation of a novel, original visualization to present the data in a creative, non-trivial way, using D3.js (see examples on Vast Challenge 2008 developed in class). You can refer to visualization techniques already present in the literature, by adapting or implementing part of the solution.
• Interactivity should be implemented, providing toolbars, selections, and filters for the data.
• The visual widget should interact among them, realizing a set of linked displays to browse the data across multiple dimensions
• The project should be submitted as a Git repository
• The project report should be submitted 4 days before the discussion and should discuss at least the following points:
  • Description of data and presentation of the pattern or model to communicate
  • design choices: colors, interactions, shapes, transformations)
  • state-of-art: similar tools or interfaces for the same problem
  • Detailed description of the visualization with a description of the interaction
  • use case example for an analytical task

The student may choose one of the following project proposals. She/he can also propose an additional topic. In this case, a project proposal should be submitted for approval, containing a description of the data, a sketch of the possible visualization, and the motivation for the project.

• Visual Analytics for Data Scientists. Natalia Andrienko, Gennady Andrienko, Georg Fuchs, Aidan Slingsby, Cagatay Turkay, Stefan Wrobel. Springer, 2020. ISBN: 978-3-030-56146-8
• VisMaster - Mastering the information age
• Design for Information. Isabel Meirelles, Rockport Publisher,2013.
• Interactive Data Visualization for the Web, Scott Murray, O'Reilly Atlas, 2013

• Tools
  • D3 Javascript Library
  • Vue.js Framework
  • Node.js
• Reading Material
  • Data Visualization Resources (on Slideshare)
  • Why Most People's Charts & Graphs Look Like Crap
  • Data + Design (crowdsourced book)
  • Pocket Guide to Writing SVG
• Inspiration
  • http://datavisualization.ch/
  • http://infosthetics.com/
  • http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
  • http://visualoop.com/

All exercises and code discussed during each lesson are available as a Git repository at: https://github.com/va602aa-master

A collection of Observable Notebooks are available at https://observablehq.com/collection/@rinziv/va602aa

Recordings of lessons on Microsoft Teams are accessible within the channel of the course.

• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2025
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2024
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2023
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2022
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2021
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2020
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2019
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2018
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2017
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2016
• Visual Analytics (602AA) - Course Semester 2015