Introductory Questions

1. My name is Em McPhie. I’m a junior majoring in communication design and minoring in writing.
2. I took a computer science class in high school and worked as TA for CSE 131 my freshman year, and enjoyed the experience even though I haven’t done anything coding-related since. I’m very interested in interaction design, particularly as it relates to effective data visualization in the context of digital journalism.
3. No experience with HTML/CSS/JS yet!
4. I hope to gain a solid foundation in interaction/web design skills, and to be able to communicate and implement my visual ideas in a more technical way.
5. Designing for screens needs to be more flexible and fluid than designing for print, but that also gives it more creative potential.
6. Rest of World is an outlet that covers global tech issues. The homepage layout does a good job of having a ton of content without being overwhelming. The typeface choices are also excellent, from the monospace accent font to the angular serif used for body copy.
7. The Pudding has some of my favorite data visualizations. The essays (like this one) not only feature clever displays of information but also make them interactive, responding to user behavior.
8. The Current, a digital publication by Google’s Jigsaw unit, is beautifully designed and does an excellent job of storytelling and conveying data in a variety of ways.