As Senior Software Engineer and Technical Lead, I led development of interactive educational web apps that explore the science of Rubin Observatory
The process of developing web apps intended to meet Chilean and US educational standards was one of deep collaboration between the developers, designers, and educators on the Rubin Observatory Education and Public Outreach team. We went through many iterations and had many opportunities to A/B test our work in the classroom. Unique Data Visualizations and other novel UX were core to these Formal Education experiences. I will highlight a couple of my favorites.
Hubble Plot

A Hubble PLot is is a graph that plots the velocity of galaxies against their distance from us. It visually represents Hubble's Law, which states that galaxies are receding from us at a speed proportional to their distance, which in turns serves as proof that the universe is constantly expanding. When I learned about Hubble's Law in school I remember learning that it is a constant, and you can use the constant in determine other things. I don't recall ever learning how that constant is calculated, let alone stepping through the process of doing so. Rubin Observatory's Expanding Universe Investigation does just that, and the interactive Hubble Plot is one part of that experience. I especially like how exhibiting the direct relationship between distance and velocity in a 2D graph alongside a 3D plot of the galaxies' relative positions mitigates a common misconception among first-time learners that the XY axes on a Hubble Plot show positional information.
Image Cutout Viewer


The goal with these flipbook style grayscale images is to expose learners to the kinds of observations real astronomers use to do science, and also to virtually put the learner in the role of a time-domain astronomer making regular observations and drawing conclusions from how those objects observed change over time. You can see these data visualizations in action in many investigations including the Exploding Stars Investigation and the Observable Universe.
Orbit Viewer




This basic Orbit Visualizer uses three.js to visualize orbital mechanics that have been somewhat simplified to ensure learners always reach the desired educational outcomes. I worked closely with the educators and astronomers on our team to ensure I was implementing all of the math correctly. You can see these data visualizations in throughout the Hazardous Asteroids Investigation and the Surveying the Solar System investigation.
Supernovae

This tool helps learners understand why and how supernovae observations are distributed across the visible universe. You can see this data visualization in action in the Exploding Stars Investigation.
Color Filter Tool

Lush color images from space strikingly inform how we think our universe looks. The Color Filter Tool exposes learners to the fact that the colors used in such striking images are, in part, arbitrary. And what's more, that scientists are not interested in utilizing the same color pallettes as we come to expect in color space images. You can see this data visualization in action in the Coloring the Universe Investigation.
Interactive table + bar Graph


Across the roster of Formal Education Investigations there are almost every flavor bar chart, scatter plot, and table. But their ubiquity should not be confused for simplicity. Even very simplistic looking plots can impart complex science concepts with an immediacy and depth many learners find absent from textual explanations.