I’d like to start by debunking the idea that coding is easy. Well, more specifically, that coding is now easy with the advent of AI. Or at least it isn’t within a structure like D3.js. I feel like I am dreaming in syntax errors. All in all I made 25+ iterations; I will share my most meaningful iterations here.
I chose this particular tool because it was already on my radar as something that might be useful to me in a wider sense. I still believe that to be true, but perhaps with some important caveats.
My takeaway from this project is that a library like D3 only offers endless possibilities if you know what those possibilities are and how to access them. That in itself is quite a steep learning curve. I feel like I might have cracked the door open and now have a narrow view into this world, but the sliver is still thin.
I no longer believe unequivocally that putting data into a visualisation will somehow teach me things about that data, or at least not in a completely unpredictable way. You can test hypotheses this way, though, and that might ultimately be just as useful.
You have to make choices when preparing your data; otherwise, it is unreadable to D3. These choices are never without bias, so you’re essentially determining what the visualisation can reveal and what it will obscure.
Even when a visualisation exposes a discrepancy you hadn’t predicted, you still don’t know how that discrepancy occurred. Is it your own bias? Is it a lack of data from the field? Is there a wider bias within the area you are studying?
All of these are further questions that the visualisation cannot answer. It can interrogate a question, but ultimately it will answer with another question, which is then up to you to interpret.
In that way, it becomes more of a dialogue. And perhaps that brings me back to where I started. AI can generate code without necessarily teaching me how it works, just as D3 can generate visualisations without necessarily explaining what they reveal. Both can produce results, but neither can do the understanding for me.
Below, I have the full list of meaningful iterations. I will not attempt to explain every single one, as many decisions go into each iteration.
The two visuals below were the only two iterations in which my coding errors produced a result. Coding errors usually result in a Syntax error or similar; these two produced a somewhat humorous and a strangely beautiful result.
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