| home page | visualizing government debt | critique by design | final project I | final project II | final project III |
If you’re joining from the data story, welcome! I’d suggest clicking through Parts 1 and 2 on the top bar to see all the progress I’ve made before this point.
The first and most obvious change is that I created three new infographics to help tell my story. I wanted to address the rising tuition trend as mentioned by one of my users from Part II, and I needed to fill in the gap that I had flagged was present during Part II for my visualizations on the industry effect. I chose to turn the potential consequences of the end of affirmative action into an infographic; then, I used the Census data to create an infographic on white representation on professional stages and in the general American population. Because of my new visualizations, I was able to shorten some of my text blocks.
In terms of content, I also found a very impactful quote from a San Francisco artistic director that I used as the segue into the final section. I think that for people who are not impacted by affirmative action (I’m part of this group too), it’s valuable to hear the perspective of someone who has been. I wanted to ensure I was including the voices of those who are most impacted by this policy to avoid any possible feedback of saviorism.
Next, I got some feedback after my final class presentation to clear up my donut chart. I got the feedback that greying out two categories of expenses made them seem like they belonged together. This was not my intent, so what I did was I used pastel shades of the two main expenses to show a relationship but not overpower the chart with too much color.
I added some spacers between my text blocks to try and make them align with the visualizations better, so the reader can get more information about the visualization while having easier access to it.
On the subject of color, I also changed the colors of the bar chart for application fees to fit the overall color palette of my data story (warm tones, with a bit of purple).
I think that based on the feedback I received from my user research, my audience seemed clear: I want to focus this presentation on the general public and university administrators while providing information that is relevant to people going through the musical theatre audition process. This was purposeful because, with decisions like tuition for some of these programs, the buck stops at the university administration, not necessarily at department heads. While my primary call to action is still to the general public to support non-profits like TFCA to help bridge the gap, I wanted to also include a secondary call to action to university administrators that is working on the problem at the systemic level.
I received very good feedback in Part II that my data story would be accessible to the general public. I didn’t make too many changes in this respect, but I did add a few further details like explaining some of the costs, or what a Unified Audition is, and using a popular musical to show the problem we have at hand.
For my visualizations relating to cost, I had to take a slightly unconventional approach to compile the data I needed. For the bar charts about the cost of applications to the schools and tuition and housing costs, I pulled these figures from the Admissions and Financial Aid pages for each school. I either used the full “cost of living” figures that the schools provided (AMDA and NYU had numbers like this), or I calculated it manually by finding a room + board package similar to a traditional first-year experience (dormitory living with a meal plan).
Here are those citations!
“2023-2024 Undergraduate Tuition - Student Financial Services - Office of Enrollment Management.” Carnegie Mellon University. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.cmu.edu/sfs/tuition/undergraduate/index.html.
“Admissions.” AMDA. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.amda.edu/admissions#req.
“Cost of Attendance.” Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/offices-and-services/cost-attendance.
“Tuition & Aid.” Elon University. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.elon.edu/u/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/tuition-and-aid/.
“Tuition & Fees.” Office of the Registrar. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://ro.umich.edu/tuition-residency/tuition-fees.
“Tuition & Fees.” University of Cincinnati. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.uc.edu/about/bursar/tuition-fees.html.
“Tuition Information.” NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://tisch.nyu.edu/admissions/tuition-fees.
“Tuition, Fees, and Expenses.” The Juilliard School. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.juilliard.edu/campus-life/tuition-financial-aid/tuition-fees-and-expenses.
“Undergraduate Admission: Cost of Attendance.” Pace University. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.pace.edu/admission-and-aid/undergraduate-admission/tuition-and-cost/cost-of-attendance.
“Undergraduate Tuition.” Student Finance - Northwestern University. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.northwestern.edu/sfs/tuition/undergraduate/#tab-panel2.
Icon Attributions: University icons created by Smashicons - Flaticon Tuition icons created by Freepik - Flaticon
For my own personal costs, I dug through my emails between September 2017 and May 2018 to collect any pertinent information I could that related to New York Unifieds. I was able to find my flight and hotel receipts, some receipts for application fees, then some receipts from my coachings that I had leading up to that weekend of auditions. I made an estimate on food, because I couldn’t really find anything there.
I really didn’t have a clue of what I wanted to explore with this project, because I felt like doing something in the arts was too “obvious” or “easy”. However, I learned through the process of in-class critiques and the user research that Sondheim was right: “art isn’t easy.” Diving into this subject really made me realize that people in the creative industries don’t necessarily always recognize their privilege. By making the decision so early in your life to pursue the arts as a career, you’re subjecting yourself and your family to hardship far beyond what other students go through to study a more traditional subject. Hearing the comments of “I never knew the other route was so much less expensive” really made me wonder what some of my friends would be doing with their lives if they had known this information sooner. I really hope that having this project being made public helps to demystify the process a bit, and maybe it could help someone along the way.
Overall, I have really loved this class, and tried to soak in everything like a sponge! I’ve come a long way from freaking out about how to set up a README. I’m excited to take the skills I’ve learned here into future courses, and hopefully into my post-graduation jobs. Thank you so much!!