DPHU1008 Chap.12 Data Redesign and the Spoken Defence
Data Redesign and the Spoken Defence
Assessment 3 is worth 40% and marked out of 20. You create one original data rendering from your Assessment 2 data set and your Part One answers, show it in the Week 12 workshop and defend it aloud for seven minutes. The outline organises the redesign through four pillars, data, context, narrative and visuals, and asks the narrative to expose or challenge biases, assumptions or power dynamics.
Your tutor's feedback is part of the task: marks are awarded for acting on it.
The defence reflects on your aims, intent, design and visualisation choices in your own words, with theoretically informed support from the readings and sources acknowledged aloud.
A planning sheet guides the work, from summarising Part One to choosing materials and an editorial form, and it requires feminist data principles and the pillars of data storytelling as supports. Week 12 attendance is compulsory.
The two course samples show what the top bands reward.
One turns an industry group's recycling figure into a balance scale tipped toward plastic production, subverting a symbol of fairness and adding the missing comparison. Another turns a company's revenue table into a handmade blind box that reveals stakeholders the table left out. In both, the form carries the argument before the speaker explains it.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Turning Part One critiques into design moves
- 02
The outline's pillars: data, context, narrative, visuals
- 03
The planning sheet in six steps
- 04
Materials and editorial form
- 05
Pacing a seven-minute defence
- 06
Criteria: narrative, visuals, defence, response to feedback
- 07
Week 12 attendance as a condition of the spoken defence
- 08
Two course samples: balance scale and blind box
Worked example · free
Defending a redesigned water-use chart
- +1Aim and intent: show that water restrictions fall hardest on households already using least.
- +1Design choice: jars make volume felt through the body, applying the principle of legitimising embodiment and affect.
- +1Design choice: the caption names the source and year, considering context so viewers can situate the data.
- +1Feedback: after Week 11 feedback, the jars were reordered by income so the pattern reads at a glance.
Key terms
- Data redesign
- An original rendering that re-presents an existing data set to expose or challenge its framing.
- Spoken defence
- A seven-minute oral justification of the aims and design choices behind a redesign.
- Editorial form
- The medium chosen to communicate a redesign, such as a painting, model or storyboard.
- Response to feedback
- The criterion that rewards acting on a tutor's guidance in the finished redesign.
- Narrative criterion
- The rubric criterion rewarding a redesign that exposes or challenges biases and power dynamics in the data.
Data Redesign and the Spoken Defence FAQ
Do I need a new data set for the redesign?
No. The redesign must be based on your Assessment 2 data set and your Portfolio Part One answers. The aim is to answer the weaknesses you identified there with your own design choices.
What materials can a redesign use?
The planning sheet gives reused plastic bottles, play dough and LEGO pieces as examples and asks you to choose an editorial form, such as a painting or a storyboard, and justify it.
What happens if I miss the Week 12 workshop?
The syllabus states that attendance in that workshop is compulsory and that non-attendance without a legitimate reason might result in a zero for the assessment, so plan around it and seek special consideration if you are ill.
How long should the redesign take to build?
The outline sets no build time, but the redesign must be ready to show in the Week 12 workshop and should reflect feedback from Week 11. Starting a rough prototype early leaves room to act on that feedback, which the rubric rewards.
How is the response to feedback criterion assessed?
Top marks go to a redesign and defence that show you deeply considered and acted on your tutor's guidance, whether about course concepts or your analysis of the data. The rubric notes that workshop attendance affects your opportunities to receive that feedback.
Assessment move
Fill in the planning sheet before your Week 11 consultation so the feedback is specific. Build a rough prototype early and test it on someone outside the course: ask what they think, feel and would do. Rehearse the defence to a timer, linking each design choice to one principle or pillar and one reading. Bring a one-line summary of each tutor comment to Week 12 so the defence can point to the change each comment produced.
Photograph each version of your prototype so you can show how feedback changed it.
DPHU1007 Media, Society and Politics · DPHU1001 Journalistic Voices and Values · DPHU1003 News Fundamentals
