Initial Post

Kirk (2016) tells us that all requirements and restrictions of a project must be identified.  Select 1 key factor below and discuss why Kirk (2016) states it will impact your critical thinking and shape your ambitions:

• People: stakeholders, audience.
• Constraints: pressures, rules.
• Consumption: frequency, setting.
• Deliverables: quantity, format.
• Resources: skills, technology

Reference: Kirk, Andy. Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design (p. 50). SAGE Publications

first student post

I chose “Resources: skills, technology” to discuss why Kirk states it will impact my critical thinking and shape my ambition.
Skills, you must take inventory of the available capabilities on the team. You may take inventory of yourself, on the personal capabilities that you possess. Not only offer what skills you have and what skills you don’t, but also which of these skills are you good at. What skills go you have available as a team and what weaknesses exist. Working as a team some skills can be compensated for or enhanced. By recognizing the available talent in the group, you should choose and place wisely to optimize available resources. The availability and optimal utilization (critical thinking) of skills can shape ambition.

Technology tools are plentiful for data visualization and becoming more and more holistic. Meaning there are some packages that will do almost everything, as a complete suite. In previous times, varying tools were used to accomplish different tasks. Different tasks entailed the many stages of prepping the data, developing the data, and visually presenting the data. Now technological tools accomplish almost every task. However, cleaning the data is sometimes a manual task and may require writing custom code in languages such Python and R. (The R Project for Statistical Computing, 2018)

Skills must be learned, enhanced, and adapted to ever changing technology. Skills must have the underlying principles that are developed as critical thinking when stepping though a process and knowing the correct and efficient direction. Having clear knowledge of data analysis principles allows ambition to grow, knowing you can accomplish the task. Possessing the skills (principle fundamentals and critical thinking), and technology allow you to “embrace the constraints” and “heighten your creative senses and lead to successful, innovative solutions”. (Kirk, 2016)

second student post

• People: Stakeholders, audience  One of the most important parts of your stakeholder mapping is to identify the impact a stakeholder can have on the success of your project. Keep it simple. High or low is often enough. The impact that a stakeholder can have is a combination of two things; Their formal authority and also their ability to influence others. At the top of the tree of influence are Apex Stakeholders. They can influence other stakeholders without being easily influenced themselves. Make it your priority to find these people and bring them over to your point of view. Once you do, you will be able to use their influence as a lever to amplify your own.  Stakeholders are a major part of the project. Everything in a project should go the way they want and if not, it would be difficult for the people who worked on the project. These stakeholders can be really helpful in helping secure your future. The ideas and the works that have been found under the supervision of the stakeholders, benefits people and help them in a lot of ways.  Theories, concepts and models of audiences, stakeholders or publics, public relations and communication are important because they help us understand and explain our public relations campaigns and the situations these campaigns address. They determine how we plan and conduct public relations. Thus the different theories we hold will lead to different ways of planning and practicing public relations.

and   Assignment 2

Complete the “Police Killings” Exercise located at the following link:

http://book.visualisingdata.com/chapter/chapter-4

Working With Data