Data by Design is an interactive book by Dr. Lauren Klein. It is built for the modern web, using cutting edge technologies, and is still in development (since there is no other reason you would be reading this). The book focuses primarily on data visualizations from throughout history, and seeks to pull those visualizations into the present to draw insight from them. Each chapter focuses on a different visualization, but they all build onto an appreciation for data visualization, as well as for the interactivity afforded by the web.
Data by Design has a few features which place it on the cutting edge. In no particular order, these are listed below:
- The Notebook: users can take notes on content in the chapter to save and come back to later, but the notebook allows dragging and dropping of content from the chapter into itself. This includes interactive content, meaning that readers have a sandbox to experiment with each visualization in.
- The Meta-visualizations: the book seeks to embrace its own interest in data visualization fully by visualizing its own content overall and in each chapter.
- The Scrollytelling: The book seeks to fully embrace the "hypermedia" potential of the web. Many well established sites have already implemented scrolly telling in their media, most notably the New York Times.
As we develop the site, we'll be updating our developer blog here.
Here's the quickest way to run the site.
- Install node and npm, which manages the project's dependencies
- Clone the project, then open the project directory in a terminal and run
npm install - Once the dependencies are installed, run
npm run app:remoteto run the frontend site locally using our hosted backend server.