The Stanford Literary Lab website was made to examine and track different patterns for different literary genres. The website also describes the projects as methods to track genre trends, societal trends, and even gender based trends, over the course of history. The Literary Lab Pamphlet discusses how five people are trying to create a computer program that identifies a genre without any human intervention. They believe that it can be accomplished but it is a very complicated process, just like most digital processes, as we have discussed in class.
The Visualizing Data website that displays the Chicago Planning Agency plan is successful because it uses high-quality images and videos and the website has an accessible and manageable interface. Furthermore, they use charts, graphs, and interactive programs that allow users to engage with the data and understand it in many different ways.
The Visualizing Data website that displays the grey colored charts is successful because when predominantly using the color grey, you are then able to highlight the most important information with any non-grey color. Furthermore, it is easy to distinguish different shades of grey, which create an easily understood reference for interpretation. Grey is also a good color to use because it can represent the data that is momentarily unselected; with this in mind, you can still show the data, without putting it at the forefront.
The Hyper History website is seemingly successful because while the organization of the data is clear, the way it is displayed is not. In other words, there are very clear categories of “People, History, Events, Maps” and “Science, Culture, Religion, Politics”. However, upon clicking on these categories it is very confusing to read the data because each tab has a different layout; there is not a uniform layout. Furthermore, the navigation of the website is not the most simple. In regards to the previous website, this website could definitely use more grey.
The Neoformix website is successful at depicting the characters in Les Miserables. Even though you do not get a sense of the plot from this website, you get a rough understanding of the personalities of certain characters, a better understanding of which characters are more important, and an understanding for themes and concepts throughout the novel. Furthermore, the use of grey throughout the entire background of the website allows the design of the page to highlight all of the necessary information they are trying to portray.
Under the Analyze Data tab, we found “Visual Understanding Environment”. This tool is useful in analyzing large amounts of data because it can integrate with multiple repositories to pull in, organize, and analyze data. In other words it has the capability of compiling and sorting incredible amounts of data. Under the Visualize Data tab, we found “myHistro”. This tool is useful in analyzing large amounts of data because researchers can simultaneously create timelines and maps. Furthermore, it allows users to “travel” through history by learning about various places and events while following a timeline. This tool also allows users to “travel” at their own pace, so it is very user friendly.
-Jean Beecher, Matt Golding