Visualisation Assignment Idea

So on the Computer Science Degree at Durham, we do a submodule on visualisation - it covers techniques, best practises, etc for presenting data as accurately and informatively as possible. Each year there is a summative (ie: it counts towards the degree) assignment for students to undertake, for example: ours was to present several dimensions of obesity data from the NHS. I've had my own idea about a potential assignment that I would have loved to do (and may still give it a shot for giggles this summer).

Goal: Design and implement a visualisation to display the English names of colours based on their respective RGB or HSB values - Look here for inspiration.

You should:
- Produce at least two visualisations based on different dimensions of data.
- Make the visualisation dynamic or otherwise have some sort of user interactions.
- Write a report highlighting the visual principles used (and other standard assignment stuff).

Consider:
- How can Voronoi decomposition be applied to the colour naming problem? (Lyle's Hint: the colour names are the data points, and we want to find the point closest to any given colour value).

The beauty in this assignment is the range of interpretations possible - one person might do a simple 1D spectrum from violet to red with name roll overs, while another might create a 3D colour cube with the axis representing red, green and blue components with an interactive 'slice'. Someone else might go for a hybrid HSB colour wheel with central square thing like in the example link. Furthermore implementing a Voronoi Diagram would be interesting, and easy to spot bugs due to how obvious colour mismatch can be.

It also covers much of the taught content: multi-dimensional data, use of colour, Tufte principles of Visual Excellence as well as visualisation evaluation.

So yeah, that's the idea. This is something I would have wanted to do, and may still have a crack. =)