First, sorry for posting three weeks’ blogs at one time.
To conclude what I have done in the last three weeks in one word, it is “coding”. After done the preparations, we decided to get started to improve the usability of SE. Based on the user research, we list several things that needs to be improved. And in the last three weeks, I focused on the following tasks:
1. Allow users to choose data units in parallel coordinate plots;
2. (Bug fix) Parallel coordinates hover label is not consistent with selected regions;
3. In parallel coordinates plots, remove month/season axis, use a selection box instead;
4. Allow users to label graphs (e.g. give a title) when exporting to SVG;
5. In matrix view, when highlighting a cell on one side of the matrix, automatically highlight the cell corresponding to that on the other side of the matrix;
6. Allow users to change color schemes of the matrix view.
For task 1, it is implemented but needs further improvement. For task 2, there is no bug now. For task 3, the month/season axis is removed now, but the selection box function hasn’t been implemented. For task 4, it’s kind of unprocurable due to some technology reasons, but we try to find another way to do it. For task 5 and 6, both of them are in process because they are more difficult and complex than others.
Since I need to change other’s code to implement those functions, it took me a lot of time to read and understand the code. But I am happy to do that, cause I can also learn a lot.
Meanwhile, I downloaded about 200G data that will be processed and exported into SE.
In future, I’ll continue to improve the usability of SE and begin to contact the climate scientists to gather some useful suggestions about the changes.