DS105 2025-2026 Autumn Term Icon

🖥️ Week 11 Lecture

Project Communication and Management

Author

Dr Jon Cardoso-Silva

Published

13 December 2025

📍 Logistics

Time and Location: Thursday, 11 December 2025, 16:00 - 18:00, CLM 5.02

This is the final lecture of the Autumn Term. We’ll focus on how to communicate your findings effectively through websites and manage your group project work. Tomorrow (Friday) you’ll deliver your pitch presentations in labs.

📝 Note on Lecture Format

This is the final lecture before your pitch presentations tomorrow. I’ll be flexible with the content based on your questions and needs. We may skip certain sections if you have specific requests or concerns about your projects. Consider this page a reference for your Group Project work.

Current student requests:

Hour 1: Effective Data Communication

Learning from Professional Examples

In July 2023, the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the following analysis online: “Why do children and young people in smaller towns do better academically than those in larger towns?”.

What makes this an effective data story?
  1. Clear narrative arc: Starts with the finding, explores explanations, acknowledges limitations
  2. Contextual explanations: Each visualisation has accompanying text that explains what you’re seeing
  3. Progressive complexity: Simple charts first, more complex analyses later
  4. Transparent methodology: Explains data sources and analytical decisions
  5. Interactive elements at the end: Dashboard complements the main story

Case Study: Masterful RICH Data Storytelling

Great visualisations tell a story and guide your audience through complex information. I’d encourage you to try to be brave in your final project and produce a single rich data visualisation that tells a big story. You will have to be creative and chase the story to find the best way to tell it.

Let’s examine an exemplary piece of data journalism from the Columbia Journalism Review:

We compared eight AI search engines. They’re all bad at citing news.

What makes this visualisation effective?

Let’s examine what makes this visualisation effective:

  1. Progressive disclosure: Guides the reader step-by-step
  2. Clear annotations: Explains what you’re seeing
  3. Thoughtful colour use: Consistent meaning throughout
  4. Hierarchy of information: Most important insights are emphasised
  5. Multiple views: Shows the same data in different ways for deeper understanding

Other rich data visualisation examples I love

🔗 LINK: Ali Wong’s Stand-Up Routine (The Pudding)
(how they made it)

🔗 LINK: Why do cats and dogs…
(design process)

Static Insights vs Interactive Dashboards

Your project website should tell a story with static insights as the primary communication method. Dashboards can complement your analysis but should not be the main point.

📊 Static insights (what you should focus on)

  • Guide the reader through YOUR analytical conclusions
  • Present findings in a structured narrative
  • Make specific claims supported by evidence, even if they are “there is no particular trend in the data!” (this is a valid conclusion)
  • The author (you) is making the argument

🎛️ Interactive dashboards (complementary only)

  • Allow readers to explore data themselves
  • No pre-determined narrative or conclusions
  • Enable filtering, selection, and custom views
  • The reader makes their own discoveries

For your project: Your website should present clear findings and arguments. If you include interactive elements, they should supplement your static analysis, not replace it. Notice how the ONS education attainment article has a dashboard at the end, but the main content is a guided narrative.

Creating Effective Project Websites

Your project website is your presentation platform for tomorrow and your final submission. Let’s make it effective.

Embedding Videos in GitHub Pages

For those who need to pre-record presentations or include video content:

<video width="100%" controls>
  <source src="./videos/presentation.mp4" type="video/mp4">
  Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>
💡 Alternative: Loom or YouTube Embedding

Loom (easiest option):

  1. Record your video on Loom (free account)
  2. Get the embed code from Loom
  3. Paste directly into your docs/index.md or docs/index.html

YouTube (if your video is already uploaded):

<iframe width="560" height="315" 
  src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YOUR_VIDEO_ID" 
  frameborder="0" 
  allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" 
  allowfullscreen>
</iframe>

Replace YOUR_VIDEO_ID with the ID from your YouTube URL.

Quarto Markdown for Professional Websites

Quarto extends Markdown with powerful features for data science communication. You can use Quarto to create your docs/index.qmd file and render it to HTML:

---
title: "Our Amazing Project"
format:
  html:
    toc: true
    theme: cosmo
    code-fold: true
---

## Introduction

Our project explores...
💡 Quarto Tips for Project Websites
  • Use YAML headers to control page appearance
  • Create a consistent navigation structure with table of contents
  • Use callouts for important information (see Quarto callouts)
  • Include interactive elements where appropriate
  • Balance text with visuals
  • Choose a professional theme that matches your content

To render Quarto to HTML:

quarto render docs/index.qmd

This creates docs/index.html which GitHub Pages will serve automatically.

Hour 2: Project Management and Technical Tools

GitHub Issues and Pull Requests

GitHub provides tools beyond version control that help teams coordinate work effectively.

GitHub Issues: Task Tracking

Issues are like a todo list for your project. Each issue represents a discrete task or problem to solve.

Example issue:

Title: Create visualisation comparing weather patterns across cities

**Description**

We need a plot showing temperature and precipitation differences 
between our three selected cities. This will support our claim 
that weather patterns influence... 

**Requirements**

- Use seaborn with LSE colour palette
- Include monthly averages for 2023
- Add clear title and axis labels
- Export as high-res PNG for website

which you then assign to the appropriate team member.

Pull Requests: Code Review Workflow

Pull requests let you propose changes and get feedback before merging into main. You practiced this in the 💻 W10 lab.

Pull request workflow and benefits

When to use pull requests:

  • Adding major new analysis sections
  • Refactoring data collection code
  • Making significant changes to visualisations
  • Before finalising website content

Pull request workflow:

  1. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b add-weather-viz
  2. Make your changes and commit
  3. Push branch: git push -u origin add-weather-viz
  4. Open pull request on GitHub
  5. Team reviews and discusses changes
  6. Address feedback with additional commits
  7. Merge when approved

Benefits:

  • Catch errors before they reach main branch
  • Share knowledge across team
  • Document decision-making process
  • Maintain code quality

GitHub Project Board

GitHub Project boards provide a visual way to manage your workflow.

Setting up your board:

  1. Go to your repository on GitHub
  2. Click “Projects” tab
  3. Create new project board
  4. Choose “Team backlog” template

Typical columns:

  • Backlog: Tasks identified but not started
  • To Do: Prioritised tasks ready to start
  • In Progress: Currently being worked on
  • Review: Awaiting team feedback
  • Done: Completed tasks

Using the board effectively:

  • Move issues as work progresses
  • Limit “In Progress” items per person (focus on completion)
  • Regular check-ins: “What’s blocked? What’s next?”
  • Link pull requests to issues for tracking

For your project:

  • Set up board in your first meeting after the pitch presentation
  • Identify major tasks (data collection, cleaning, analysis, visualisation, documentation)
  • Assign ownership
  • Use this throughout the group project work

Student Requests

What You Need for the Group Project

Coming soon

Preparing for Tomorrow

Final checklist:

Good luck with your presentations tomorrow! 🎉

Remember: The pitch is about demonstrating planning and coordination. Your ideas can evolve after the presentation. Focus on showing that your team works well together and that you’ve thought through the project feasibility.