This autumn Stewart will teach a new data visualization course at ITP titled Visualizing Data: Code meets Graphic Design (H79.2812). (View Stewart’s ITP bio.) The following is ITP’s course description; hyperlinks added.

The goal of this course is to augment your introductory Processing knowledge with concepts, examples, and sample code for creating data visualizations. In addition to code the course focuses on graphic design, specifically hierarchy and typography in visualization. Here are some design questions the course considers: Who is your audience? How would a first-time user approach/understand a piece? Does your choice of typeface enhance or detract from what you’re trying to communicate? Discussion ranges from writing clean source code to Sol Lewitt, Douglas Engelbart and Edward Tufte. On the technical side the course examines how to parse data from XML (including Atom and RSS feeds), CSVs, and images. We cover simple chart, graph, and connectivity examples before moving on to your own visual experimentation. By semester’s end you should be able to load data, render something visually compelling, and have something interesting to say about it.