In the age of Big Data, we face flood-like data every day and everywhere. It is not easy for us to understand and digest all the plain and raw data. How to present such data creatively and understandably thus becomes our primary concern. We followed the human-centered and iterative design process in our data visualization projects to make the stories behind being told clearly. Although there are still drawbacks in our visualizations, we learned from feedback and from fixing these issues and gradually made more progress.

There are three major reflections from our design:

1. Choose a more aesthetic or understandable design.

We've been trying to combine aesthetic and more understandable types of charts in our three assignments. Some succeed but some are not. For example, in our Viz of Non-Domestic Violence Related Assaults, we did the circular heat map to present the density and seasonal distribution of crime cases. Although it's more aesthetic than some basic charts such as a line chart, the result we presented may mislead and scare our audiences. The boxes that represent the crime incidents in the outer circle (2020's data) are bigger than the boxes in the inner circle (2015's data), but in reality, the violence numbers are better.

2. Must tell a story without the write-up.

Storytelling is one of the important skills. We can't only show the data without considering meanings, audiences and stories. In our Viz of Healthcare Spending and Life Expectancy in the United States, although we've used text to show main stories and aspects, we lack clear titles and legends to make the story obvious to audiences. For example, the money bag icon in the dumbbell chart doesn't provide hints - who is spending the money? The government or person?

3. Treat assignments as real-world projects.

Our creativity and ideas may be restricted by the assignment's marking rubric, but in reality, assignments provide a chance for us to practice real-world skills. We must have the right attitude toward the assignment, not just completing a "job".