Week 11: Interactive Visualization: Insight Through Inquiry / Bill Ferster's ASSERT Model

Insight and Visualization 

    Bill Ferster gives the understanding of his work by defining interactive visualization as a user's ability to dynamically interact with data and create insight for expansion upon what the designer originally intended (8). Through the breakdown of visual experience and understanding how people interact with data, we're can be aware as to how we need to prepare material to not only educate, but also to invoke new perspective and dynamically evolve our question asking. Ferster ultimately is writing to educators, detailing how a next level mode of personal interaction with data can spawn and create new discussion, new questions, and new insights to topics that have been explored from a surface point of view.

The model he uses to break down his thoughts is created by Jesse James Garrett in 2003, titled Elements of User Experience, employs a methodology to understand the user experience from a "top down" perspective to see how the surface level is translated to the overall strategy of the project and model (37). His introduction of the already used models is important to build the foundation of Ferster's self-created model, the ASSERT Model. 

    The ASSERT Model refers to the same thought process of Garret's Elements of User Experience model, but rather from a "top down" perspective, it's from a cognitive process and planning format; Rather than analyzing the project in it's completion, Ferster's model focuses on the narrative of the experience and analyzes an idea and it's best methods of execution (40). The ASSERT Model is unique in the idea that it's construction creates the ability to apply the ASSERT Model on top of itself. For example, finishing a story (T, Tell) creates the opportunity for other researchers to ask another question on top of the model, creating an ever evolving conversation. 

The ASSERT Model: In Practice

The ASSERT Model is important because of it's widespread usage and transferability between projects, digital and non digital. Personally, I can apply this to my thesis to create a clear presentation of how data can be used to create a narrative. Here, using the model, I'll expand my questions for my thesis.

Ask - Ask a Question

  In my analysis of the visualization of USCT troops and their geospatial patterns, I wondered how the drafted/substituted solider faired in comparison to the self conscripted solider both during the war and after. My question, directly, is "How does the experience and service of drafted/substituted soldiers translate into their occupation of space?" This question involves the question of spacial history and a timeline built narrative that shows a history of soldiers and their experiences surrounding their involuntary and indirect service.

Search - Search for Information

Searching for information begins with diving into mass archives of muster rolls, soldier logs, diaries, hospital records, pension files, letters to Congress, censuses, and even burial logs. All together, it's forming a vision to illuminate a untold story.

Relying on databases is heavily influential for my work specifically. The issue that arises is the difference between formatted data and unformatted data. Specifically, understanding the extent to which data is currently understandable by the numerical inferences is key; What sources are found only on paper and which sources are already transformed into a quantitive and numerical format, ready to be plugged in? For me, multiple sources found in the National Archive are simply digital version of muster rolls with no analysis that accompanies them. Transferring the raw data into XML and Excel sheets is a major step in the visualization and structuring of data. 

Structure - Structure the Data

Structuring the data is part of illuminating an untold story. Specifically for my work, it's going through archives and separating the drafted/substituted soldiers from the known, self-conscripted soldiers. This involves creating a narrative of personal experiences, grievances, thoughts about the war, results of service (death, dismemberment, etc.), and seeing how their lives after the war were transformed by their involvement and the congressional response (or lack thereof). 

Envision - Envision the answer

Envisioning the data involves creating a formative answer based on data collected. For me, finding a correlation between data sets early on would give a path to formulate possible correlations and connections for future ideas to answer the overall question more directly with clarity for a specific answer that is shaped by not only the data, but also it's visualization and representation as Ferster suggests.

Represent - Represent the visualization

GIS Maps and Timelines are perfect for creating individual maps and tracts of veterans with documentation and source files. The visualization in maps and tracts makes the story of individual veterans not only seen and heard, but also allows for the connection between experiences and thoughts circulating the war. The main idea of the question can be answered through establishing a collective memory that does not currently exist. 

Tell - Tell a story

Telling the story involves a cumulation of every aspect of my project; Asking the question, creating a tangible data, mapping the stories, finding connections and correlation between shared experiences, and visualizing it in a map that makes a tangible story that employs more research questions. Fester acknowledges the cumulation of the work resulting in a "So what?" idea format. The idea is to create a continuation. 

Ultimately, Bill Ferster's model and thoughts circulating the method of visualization and accessing of databases, managing data, formatting statistics in work, and even classroom methodology is widely helpful in enganging in research that not only answers questions, but also employs further ideas that create a sense of care and consideration for the data present through visualization and representation.