BTW. 2007, 2008, 2009 (my favorite), 2010, 2011, 2012.

1. Frieder Knauss

I can add very little to the appreciation circulating on this site except to say that Mr. K manages the hat trick of a) personal retrospection, b) data design, and (the rarity) c) editorial.

That he does this in several thousand fewer pixels than all of his competitors is to his credit, as is the vomit-themed color palette which he somehow sells as an element of his NCLB nausea.

2. Sam Shah

That Sam didn’t place speaks to the overall quality of the entire slate. From fonts to colors to axes and grids, none of his design choices cohere. Yet he tosses them all on the same wall with a stuffed buck and the whole thing looks like some kind of genius aneurysm. The herkyjerky, undistributed, unaligned tabs on his “Blog Hits” slide are a particular high point for me.

An appreciation by Ben Wildeboer:

Simon Job knows what he’s doing. First he grabs my attention by plastering his first slide with pictures of his adorable new baby and then goes on to use his four slides to tell a compelling story of his new life with his new daughter. I can sense the major changes his life has undergone after the birth of his first child through the information contained in his annual report- the photo sharing with family & friends, the frequent doctor visits, new sounds in his house, and the unenviable task of changing all those “nappies.” Print out that Nappies slide and post it in every sex ed. classroom and it’d probably do more to prevent teen pregnancy than any method currently in use. The fusion of good, simple design around a coherent storyline made Simon Job’s annual report stick out in my mind above all the rest. Of course, it could just be those adorable baby pictures.

An appreciation by Sam Shah:

I ranked Mr. K at the absolute top of my list because his slides, simple and minimalist, speak volumes. With just four pieces of data, Mr. K has painted us a picture of a school flailing at the bottom of the rungs. Students are underperforming, the school’s academic perfomance is not improving, and the school is undergoing administrative shifts too. Follow along with me here, for a short minute, because I think there’s something moral about these slides. They aren’t just statistics, but carefully chosen statistics. Mr. K could have written about the number of teachers in his school, or the number of students he teachers, or whatever. Numbers, as a math teacher, abound everywhere. But instead, he gives us this: somewhere underneath these slides is an imperative that things are not okay the way they stand, that things need to change.

Design-wise, Mr. K hit the mark. Using miniscule areas of simple geometric figures highlights, without being obnoxiously in-your-face, where his school and his students lie relative to other schools in California. The fact is simply that using this same technique four times over is synergistic — but only because four such simple and powerful statistics exist. Take a moment and look at each slide individually. They each say something about the place Mr. K spends a preponderance of his time. But as I said, together, they speak as one. And loudly.

An appreciation by Simon Job:

In his Annual Report for 2008, Ben Wildeboer presented a lot of information with clarity, showing a keen eye for design. Each slide presents more than one set of data, yet this is achieved without overcrowding. The Photographs slide, for example, effectively uses bubbles to show not only the location of the photos, but the number at that location. The Running slide was particularly engaging, so much to look at. I really like how the background has been used as part of the data presented.

Sarah Cannon

I like not having the scale shown on these. Full confession, I did not track all of this data, so some of the numbers are guessed. My personal favorite slide is the one with the least fact behind it and my least favorite is the one where I can tell you the numbers exactly. Go figure.

Collette Cassinelli

… this year I used the opportunity to play around with Photoshop – something I never take the time to do.

Simon Job

With Sarah, our first child, born this year — her arrival and impact on our lives defines 2008. These 4 slides show just some of what’s been happening so far.

Fred Knauss

I’m going to side with Don Norman, and say that In a proper design, both are important. Though, if there is some imperfection, I think that having beautifully laid out information that is incomprehensible is worse than an eyesore that tells a good story.

Erick Lee

George Mayo

Alice Mercer

I only had two infographics. Why? I don’t keep a spreadsheet with the minutiae of my life. I know that some consider this useful, or therapeutic. In my family, it usually comes with a three letter acronym diagnosis from the DSM IV. No aspersions on Dan or Mr. Feltron, but I’m not into that.

Alby Reid

Sam Shah

I’m slightly disappointed with this set of slides I made because they don’t tell a story. My slides from last year (2007) told a story – of moving to NYC and changing careers. There was text which explained the stages of my year. This year my slides – hastily done – don’t tell a coherent story.

Claire Thompson Thomas

Ben Wildeboer

Luckily I’m just dorky enough to keep track of a few data sets of interest to me. I was also lucky to have a snow day today- otherwise these would probably not be complete.

I abandoned it, to a certain extent. My content means a lot to me, if only because I bothered to track the data all year long, but my design work is simply functional – a staid set of bar charts and line graphs. See you next time.

started my dy/dan 4 slide project. i might not finish… just not inspired and don’t have knowledge of the tools to do this. – Sam Shah, who finished second place (!) last year.

I was shocked, frankly, we had twenty entries last year to what was a pretty demanding competition. I’m pushing my luck a second time only because I’m enjoying a fairly transcendent experience designing my own, the kind of happy nerdery you can’t keep to yourself, you know?

I mean, this bar chart is sharp as a blade, right? Any guesses what month my long-distance girlfriend became my close-distance wife?

That’s one of, like, sixteen visualizations I’m working on. We’re looking for four. Possible data sources:

• events recorded in your calendar,
• blog statistics,
• last.fm / iTunes statistics,
• credit card / bank statements,
• cell phone records,
• cocomment / commentful / disqus
• Tweetake
• Google Reader trends.

And, for the love, do not neglect PivotTables, your best offense against huge piles of data.

Throughout 2008 I tracked dozens of variables, most collected from categories of geographic location, recreation, food & beverage, and communication. I collected these data in an Excel file comprising 14 worksheets in excess of 100,000 cells. The process took minutes per day and that minimal investment is paying out huge returns here at the end of the year as I learn new techniques for data analysis, extrapolate conclusions from 2008 – some of which I knew intuitively while others surprised me – and represent them visually.

The work has been nothing short of exhilarating and I want to encourage you to undertake it also.

Instructions

1. Design information in four ways to represent 2008 as you experienced it. This can mean:
   • four separate PowerPoint slides with one design apiece,
   • one JPEG with four designs gridded onto it,
   • an Excel spreadsheet inset with four charts,
   • etc.

   Feel free to use pies, bars, dots, bubbles, Sparklines, stacks, or designs of your own construction.

2. Submit your designs. Either:
   • post them to your blog and e-mail me a link, or
   • e-mail them to me as an attachment.
3. Post your reflections either:
   • in the comments here, or
   • at your own blog.

Illustrative Examples

1. Last year’s entries.
2. Nicholas Felton’s 2008 Report, to which this content owes a debtTo all the armchair graphic designers hating in the comments, time to give it a shot yerselves..

Deadline

• Monday, February 2, 23h59, Pacific Standard Time

Judges

• TBD

Prize

• A subscription to rockin’ good design periodical Before & After magazine.
• A complete set of dy/dan NECC buttons, of which there is only one set in circulation. For good reason. Etc.
• A hardcopy of Nicholas Felton’s 2008 Annual Report.

Prizes for First Place, First Runner Up, and People’s Choice Award. Don’t forget to declare your winnings next April, etc.

Legal

• You own your images, though we’ll post them here (attributed) and, in all likelihood, pick several apart.
• Let’s limit this to those with some demonstrable connection to education – students, teachers, professionals, edubloggers. Basically, no professional designers slumming it.

At the start of winter semester, maybe a month ago, I told them they’d have homework every night, even weekends.

I called it The Feltron Project. I showed ’em mine and asked them to identify the mathematical forms. I told them we were going to take their lives and make math out of them.

Track Your Life In Four Ways

I told them they had to track four variables this semester. I shared with them my ownAnyone crazy enough to try this with me: it’s essential you play along with your students.:

• where I’ve been [cities per day]
• text messages sent / received [quantity per person per day]
• movies I’ve watched [title per medium (dvd, theater, ipod) per day]
• coffee drinks i’ve purchased [accessory per drink per location per day]

The Feltron Notebook

While they thought on it, we made Feltron notebooks: graph paper, folded, cut into quarters, and bound with repurposed file folders the last teacher left behind.

I showed them how I designed my own Feltron notebook (Coudal’s Field Notes, natch) to maximize page use.

How Do We Grade Your Life?

We discussed grading. What would an A look like? An F? A C? I steered the conversation towards three criteria:

• the interesting-ness of the variables chosen
• their consistent tracking
• their clear & pretty design

We discussed interesting and un-interesting variables. Some students are rocking this thing all semester long, counting calories, tracking everyone they text over a semester, tallying every ounce of everything they drink.

Other students are skating, tracking the number of days they’re late to school, tracking the number of times they sneeze, etc.

We conferenced, each student and I, and I suggested changes, both to add value to their final project and to make the assignment easier for themFor instance, 100 kids decided to track “TV Watched.” “What does that mean?” I’d ask. “Uh.” they’d reply. “So make it min/channel/day or min/show/day, whichever you prefer.”.

Checkpoints

This thing runs on bi-weekly checkpoints [pdf] where I move around the class and verify that everyone’s keeping up.

One Indication This Assignment Wasn’t Stupidly-Conceived

Not one student has taken exception to the workload. Several students, without my prompting, have integrated a notebook update into their daily classroom routine.

The Moment I Fell In Love With The Thing

One freshman decided to track the cigarettes she smoked each day. Not because she wanted to scandalize me or her classmates. She just “always kinda wondered.”

One Month Later

I surveyed 99 students last week: “how much time do you spend updating your Feltron notebook each day?”

The average response was 5.5 minutes with a maximum of 31 minutes and a minimum of 0 minutesNo idea what the minimum’s about..

Next Steps

• I ordered a hard copy of Nicholas Felton’s annual report (to which my assignment pays seeerious homage). We’ll pass pages around and develop a written narrative of his year.
• Then I’ll fabricate entire data sets. eg. some girl’s caffeine intake over the course of a semester. We’ll run through several infodesigns and discuss which ones tell the most effective, truthfulAll better? story. We’ll use other data sets (eg. hours spent studying) to introduce some superficial correlation.
• Uh. That’s all I have.

The Big Questions

• Do we make the graphs in Excel or work out the math by hand? One option gets ’em dirty with the math. One is more useful to their post-grad experience.
• What do I do when a student comes to class a month into the project and claims her dog ate her Feltron notebook? The question, as of first period today, ain’t hypothetical.

The Regret

I should’ve collaborated with someone here. I don’t know another teacher, period, who’s out there sweating the connection between language and math like I am here which makes The Feltron Project something of a blind jump off the high dive when it ain’t altogether obvious that the pool is filled with water, thumbtacks, or nothing.