Monthly Archives: September 2016

Design Aesthetic and Chart Junk

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In my visualization class today, we had a guest lecture by Michelle Borkin, another Northeastern professor who works in the field of information and scientific visualization. She gave us a great overview of the foundational design aesthetics of Edward Tufte.

Whether you know him by name or not, you may be familiar with some of his principles. He writes extensively about “graphical integrity,” highlighting the importance of clearly labeling of data and cautioning against distorted or misleading axes. But, perhaps more fundamentally, the Tufte-ian mantra seems to be summed in one word: simplify.

Tufte advocates for removing as much extraneous ink as possible. Non-data ink should be minimized as much of possible; clearing away the clutter and letting the data speak for themselves.

Generally, his arguments make sense – there’s no need to create a 3D bar-chart just because Microsoft Office says that you can. But in this day of infographics and data journalism, Tufte’s style can seem rather…dull.

This has led to a great debate over chart junk: a topic so real it has its own wikipedia page. “Chart junk” refers to any element of a visualization which doesn’t explicitly need to be there – elements which may make the visualization more interesting, but which don’t directly convey the data. The term was actually coined by Tufte, who, as you may have guessed, was adamantly anti-chart junk.

Recent research, though, has shown that “chart junk” isn’t necessarily inherently bad. Infographics and other visualizations designed for broad public consumption may not have the precision of a scientific visualizations, but they are more memorable and impactful.

Is chart junk okay? The answer, I guess, depends entirely on the audience, the task, and the context.

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CIRCLE identifies top 50 congressional districts for the youth vote

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Medford/Somerville, MA – Will the youth vote help shape the next Congress? A new index ranks the top 50 districts where young people could have a significant influence on the outcome of Congressional races across the country. The Youth Electoral Significance Index Top 50 was developed exclusively by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) – the preeminent, non-partisan research center on youth engagement at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.

Taking into account the competitiveness of the Congressional races, as well demographic characteristics, the number of higher education institutions in the district, and historical youth turnout data, the index highlights the districts where young people are poised to have a disproportionately high impact this year.

“Young people can shape our elections and the make-up of Congress, but their potential is limited when campaigns don’t reach out to them,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of CIRCLE. “We hope this tool encourages campaigns, media outlets, and advocates in these districts – and in many others – to engage young people on issues that matter to them.”

Key findings include:

  • Iowa’s 1st Congressional District comes out on top due in large part to a large number of college campuses (31) and high percentage of young people enrolled in college in the district.
  • New York has six Congressional Districts in the YESI Top 50, the most of any state. Though New York tends to be reliably Democratic in presidential and Senate elections, many Congressional races are much more fiercely contested.
  • Colorado has four districts on this list, including the number 2 spot in the ranking: the Colorado 6th, which includes the eastern part of the Denver-Aurora metro area. This district ranks highly due to its competitiveness: in 2012, the election was decided by only 7,000 votes, young people cast a high number of ballots, and the seat is expected to be highly contested again this year.
  • Four Michigan districts make the Top 50, including two in the top 15: Michigan’s 7th District, which includes parts of Lansing, the western suburbs of Ann Arbor, and the southeast corner of the state; and Michigan’s 1st District, in which there are 12 colleges and universities with close to 20,000 enrolled students.

Throughout this election season, CIRCLE’s 2016 Election Center will offer new data products and detailed youth voting analyses.

Finding a Seat for Social Justice at the Table of Dialogue and Deliberation

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The 4-page article, Finding a Seat for Social Justice at the Table of Dialogue and Deliberation (2014), was written by David Schoem and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 10: Iss. 1. In the article, Schoem discusses the relationships that many dialogue and deliberation organizations have toward social justice. Many D&D organizations have a tendency to shy away from social justice in an effort to maintain neutrality. Schoem puts forth three arguments that “the field needs to 1) work intentionally for social justice and serving the public good for a strong, diverse democracy, 2) confront the illusion of neutrality, and 3) address issues of privilege and power. ”

Read the article in full below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

First, most people, whatever language they choose to use, regardless of their political affiliation, perspective, or point of view, share a hope for a better society and believe in a more just world. To use the foundation of a just society or a better world as a common starting point allows for purposeful dialogue and is an invitation to a wide range of people, perspectives and viewpoints. Even the Pledge of Allegiance speaks of “liberty and justice for all,” so it’s surprising that those words are too often taken off the table in dialogue and deliberation organizations because they are seen as “too political.” To ignore social justice serves only to diminish the opportunity and promise that dialogue and deliberation have to offer.

Second, ignoring inequity and inequality predictably leads to the marginalization and exclusion of less privileged groups and those expressing unpopular opinions. Rather than opening the door to open discussion and dialogue by invoking a value of neutrality, when issues of social justice are left off the table it signals to people who are concerned with such issues that the conversation will support the status quo, that substantive change will not result, and that they are unwelcome at the table.

Third, declaring an approach of neutrality, without accounting for power and privilege, almost always privileges those in power. The invocation of unexamined neutrality ignores the power relations embedded in social issues, makes invisible the privilege and power of members of different social identities actually participating in any dialogue and deliberation, and serves to silence less privileged voices. To presume a priori an approach of neutrality mistakenly creates an unequal situation from the outset.

Fourth, efforts to convene substantive dialogue and deliberation without a social justice orientation typically end up as an exercise to give already privileged people more power. When the D&D community gathers people together for good discussions and conversations without any acknowledgement of or attention to issues of social justice, power or privilege, it simply creates space for a privileged group of people to gain an even larger voice and to reify existing inequalities. Admittedly, some in the D&D community who previously felt excluded have carved a niche for themselves and found a voice in public discourse through D&D, but too often when doing so without any social, racial, economic and/or other justice orientation, they have left even further behind those with even less privilege and power.

Fifth, issues of power and privilege are present in dialogue and deliberation whether or not people are ignorant of their presence or choose not to acknowledge them. The fact that people with more privilege are unaware of their power or may consciously choose to ignore it, does not mean that such dynamics are not present and salient in dialogue and deliberation.

Download the article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Journal of Public DeliberationSpearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen friendly form.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art20/

Watershed Governance in Coquitlam River: Fostering Participation through Integrated and Inclusive Watershed Planning

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Case: Watershed Governance in Coquitlam River: Fostering Participation through Integrated and Inclusive Watershed Planning

Sep 19 '16
Author: 
Tyler Carlson
Problems and Purpose A new paradigm of watershed governance has emerged in recent decades, one which aims to improve stewardship and protection of rivers, lakes, and streams through community-based initiatives and cross-jurisdictional collaboration (Brandes, 2005; Parsons, 2015; Fielding, 2016). While past watershed regimes typically utilised technocratic and “command-and-control” approaches to...

Dotmocracy

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Method: Dotmocracy

Sep 19 '16
Author: 
Jesi Carson
The following information about the Dotmocracy method was originally published by Public Agenda in the blog post, " Helping Participants Make Group Decisions ", by Participedia co-investigators Matt Leighninger and Tina Nabatchi . Definition Dotmocracy, also known as dot-voting or idea rating, is a technique used to select among options...

The Effects of Interactive Latency on Exploratory Visual Analysis

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In their paper, Zhicheng Liu and Jeffrey Heer explore “The Effects of Interactive Latency on Exploratory Visual Analysis” – that is, how user behavior changes with system response time. As the authors point out, while it seems intuitively ideal to minimize latency, effects vary by domain.

In strategy games, “latency as high as several seconds does not significantly affect user performance,” most likely because tasks which “take place at a larger time scale,” such as “understanding game situation and conceiving strategy” play a more important role in affecting the outcome of a game. In a puzzle game, imposed latency caused players to solve the puzzle in fewer moves – spending more time mentally planning their moves.

These examples illustrate perhaps the most interesting aspect of latency: while it’s often true that time delays will make users bored or frustrated, that is not the only dimension of effect. Latency can alter the way a user thinks about a problem; consciously or unconsciously shifting strategies to whatever seems more time effective.

Liu and Heer focus on latency effecting “knowledge discovery with visualizations,” a largely unexplored area. One thing which makes this domain unique is that “unlike problem-solving tasks or most computer games, exploratory visual analysis is open-ended and does not have a clear goal state.”

The authors design an experimental setup in which participants are asked to explore two different datasets and “report anything they found interesting, including salient patterns in the visualizations, their interpretations, and any hypotheses based on those patterns.” Each participant experienced an additional 500ms latency in one of the datasets. They recorded participant mouse clicks, as well as 9 additional “application events,” such as zoom and color slider, which capture user interaction with the visualization.

The authors also used a “think aloud protocol” to capture participant findings. As the name implies, a think aloud methodology asks users to continually describe what they are thinking as they work. A helpful  summary of the benefits and downsides of this methodology can be found here.

Liu and Heer find that latency does have significant effects: latency decreased user activity and coverage of the dataset, while also “reducing rates of observation, generalization and hypothesis.” Additionally, users who experienced the latency earlier in the study had “reduced rates of observation and generalization during subsequent analysis sessions in which full system performance was restored.”

This second finding lines up with earlier research which found that a delay of 300ms in web searches reduced the number of searches a user would perform – a reduction which would persist for days after latency was restored to previous levels.

Ultimately, the authors recommend “taking a user-centric approach to system optimization” rather than “uniformly focusing on reducing latency” for each individual visual operation.

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social justice should not be a cliché

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We should strive for social justice. But what is it?

I fear that the phrase can be used to mean: “All the things that we’d like to see in a society.” In that case, anyone who doesn’t commit to pursue “social justice” (by that name) must be against at least some of these good things; and anyone who doesn’t agree with us about what’s good must be against social justice. Then it’s us versus them: the people who care about social justice against those who don’t. The result can be a warm feeling of righteousness and solidarity, perhaps admixed with some regret that our actions don’t live up to our words.

But ask yourself: What are the things you’d like to see in a society? They are likely to be heterogeneous. For instance, equality comes in many forms, all of which may be attractive even though some are in tension (equality of opportunity, of outcomes, of status, of rights; equality for members of a community, for all adults, for all human beings, etc.). And equality won’t suffice, because no one wants to see a society in which everyone is equally miserable and oppressed. So even strong egalitarians also want some combination of liberty, peace, solidarity or community, human flourishing, excellence, and/or sustainability, for all those equal people. But liberty and equality-of-outcomes trade off, as do liberty and solidarity. In some cases, the means to achieve valuable ends are bad or they undermine the ends. For instance, I’d like to see everyone be able to work, but I worry that any policy that guaranteed employment would also undermine the value and dignity of the labor.

Once you spell out what you value with due attention to priorities, means, costs, and tradeoffs, it’s likely that your own view will be unique, or at least unusual. That chips away at the us-versus-them framework. You may begin to see other people’s views as attractive even as you continue to endorse your own. There are certainly selfish and foolish people in the world, but now it begins to seem that many of our fellow citizens also favor “social justice.” They just disagree about what it is, because that’s a profoundly hard question.

See also: we are for social justice, but what is it?; on the moral peril of cliché and what to do about it; on the moral dangers of cliché; and .

Ships Passing in the Night

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The 20-page report, Ships Passing in the Night (2014), was written by David Mathews and supported by the Cousins Research Group of the Kettering Foundation. In the article, Mathews talks about the two major movements in civic engagement; one in higher education and the other found growing among communities able to work together. He uses the analogy of the wetlands, like how life thrives in the wetlands, it is in communities that can come together, where democracy thrives. Because it is these opportunities for people to discuss details and issues of their lives, that people will become more engaged in the issues that matter to them.

Mathews explores the question, “Why, though, are these two civic movements in danger of passing like the proverbial ships in the night? More important, how might these efforts become mutually supportive?”

Below is an excerpt of the report and it can be found in full at the bottom of this page or on Kettering Foundation’s site here.

From the guide…

kf_shipspassingThe Shaffers of academe are one of the forces driving a civic engagement movement on campuses across the country. Not so long ago, the civic education of college students was of little concern. Now, thanks to educators like Shaffer, that indifference is giving way. Leadership programs are common, and students are taught civic skills, including civil dialogue. There are also more opportunities to be of service these days, which is socially beneficial as well as personally rewarding. These opportunities are enriched by students’ exposure to the political problems behind the needs that volunteers try to meet. University partnerships with nearby communities offer technical assistance, professional advice, and access to institutional resources. Faculty, who were once “sages on the stage,” have learned to be more effective in communities by being “guides on the side.” All in all, there is much to admire in the civic engagement movement on campuses.

Another civic engagement movement is occurring off campus. At Kettering, we have seen it clearly in communities on the Gulf Coast that are recovering from Hurricane Katrina…

People wanted to restore their community—both its buildings and way of life—and felt that they had to come together as a community to do that. The community was both their objective and the means of reaching that objective. This has been the goal for many of the other civic engagement movements in communities that are trying to cope with natural disasters, economic change, and other problems that threaten everyone’s well-being.

Interestingly, a year or so after Katrina, a group of scholars studying communities that survived disasters validated the instincts of Don, Mary, and their neighbors. These communities were resilient because they had developed the capacity to come together. And the resilience proved more important than individual protective measures like well-stocked pantries.

People with a democratic bent like Don, Mary, and their neighbors don’t want to be informed, organized, or assisted as much as they want to be in charge of their lives. And they sense that this means they need a greater capacity to act together despite their differences. That is why they say they want to come together as communities to maintain their communities. Unfortunately, they often have difficulty finding institutions that understand their agenda.

Nongovernmental organizations, according to a recent Kettering and Harwood study, are often more interested in demonstrating the impact of their programs than in facilitating self-determination and self-rule. Even citizens may be uncertain of what they can do by themselves and want to put the responsibility on schools, police departments, or other government agencies…

The Wetlands of Democracy
We don’t have a name for what we are seeing, but the more we see, the more we have come to believe that we are looking at something more than civil society at work, more than revitalized public life, and more than grassroots initiatives. We don’t think we are seeing an alternative political system like direct democracy; rather, we are looking at the roots of self-rule. Democratic politics seems to operate at two levels. The most obvious is the institutional level, which includes elections, lawmaking, and the delivery of services. The other level is underneath these superstructures, and what happens there is much like what happens in the wetlands of a natural ecosystem.

We have been experimenting with a wetlands analogy to describe what supports and sustains institutional politics. Wetlands were once overlooked and unappreciated but were later recognized as the nurseries for marine life. For example, the swamps along the Gulf Coast were filled in by developers, and the barrier islands were destroyed when boat channels were dug through them. The consequences were disastrous. Sea life that bred in the swamps died off, and coastal cities were exposed to the full fury of hurricanes when the barrier islands eroded. The wetlands of politics play roles similar to swamps and barrier islands. They include informal gatherings, ad hoc associations, and the seemingly innocuous banter that goes on when people mull over the meaning of their everyday experiences. These appear inconsequential when compared with what happens in elections, legislative bodies, and courts. Yet mulling over the meaning of everyday experiences in grocery stores and coffee shops can be the wellspring of public decision making. Connections made in these informal gatherings become the basis for political networks, and ad hoc associations evolve into civic organizations.

In the political wetlands, as in institutional politics, problems are given names, issues are framed for discussion, decisions are made, resources are identified and utilized, actions are organized, and results are evaluated. In politics at both levels, action is taken or not; power is generated or lost; change occurs or is blocked. We aren’t watching perfect democracy in the political wetlands because there isn’t such a thing. But we are seeing ways of acting, of generating power, and of creating change that are unlike what occurs in institutional politics.

Why the Disconnect?
It would seem that two civic engagement movements, occurring at the same time and often in the same locations, would be closely allied—perhaps mutually reinforcing. That doesn’t seem to be happening very often. Research reported by Sean Creighton in the 2008 issue of the Higher Education Exchange suggests the connection is quite limited. Even though academic institutions have considerable expertise and a genuine interest in being helpful, they don’t necessarily know how to relate to the self-organizing impulses of Don, Mary, and their neighbors…

This is an excerpt of the report, download the full guide at the bottom of this page to learn more.

About Kettering Foundation
KF_LogoThe Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: ships_passing_in_the_night

NCDD 2016 Schedule & Workshop List Announced!

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We at NCDD are thrilled to announce that we recently published the official schedule and list of conference sessions and workshops for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation this Oct. 14-16 in Boston!ncdd2016-postcard

NCDD 2016 promises to be the most exciting NCDD conference to date! As always, we’ve planned the conference weekend to be full of activity, learning, and connecting. It includes rich pre-conference offerings, our famously engaging plenary sessions, experiential field trips, the D&D Showcase, and a new Open Space – there is going to be something for everyone! Be sure to have a look at the full NCDD 2016 conference schedule at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016/schedule.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an NCDD conference without a smorgasbord of incredible workshops and sessions hosted by the brightest leaders and innovators in our field. NCDD 2016 will feature six concurrent workshop block with over 50 super diverse sessions that span the breadth and depth of the work being done by those in our field who are Bridging Our Divides, while also featuring some of the most exciting new initiatives and successful case studies in D&D. We encourage you to check out the full list of sessions and workshops at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016/workshops.

If you’ve been waiting to register for NCDD 2016, wait no longer! This schedule and list of conference sessions is just more proof that this year’s gathering will be one of the most engaging, catalytic NCDD events yet, and you won’t want to miss out!

The conference is less than a month away now, and we can’t wait to be with 400 of the most engaged and innovative leaders in this work! We look forward to seeing you in October!