Post-modern techniques of visualizing data
An outfit called Smashing Magazine posted an article last week showing what it called modern techniques of visualizing data.
Some of the techniques aren’t all that new. And some don’t really help visualize data. Some are merely illustrative.The first example Smashing cites, for example — yawn — has already beome a cliche. Seems like every other week or so, someone sends me some kind of chart drawn up as a faux subway map:
Interesting, perhaps. But not terribly informative.
And then there is the way that some Web sites will size headlines or hot links proportionally with how important they are. Or, more commonly, how many clicks they receive:
A lot of blogs do something like this with what, I’m told, is called a tag cloud. You know — one of these things:
So this has been around a while. New, and perhaps informative. But not very new.
And then, Smashing shows this example. Apparently, you input a key word and a Web site called Amaztype will find books at Amazon that match your word and use the cover art of those books to illustrate the word you keyed in:
Yeah, yeah. A very interesting illustration idea. But again: Hardly informative.
It’s not until I get to the fourth sample in the Smashing story that I see something that really shows data — this example from Time magazine:
OK, now that’s helpful. And informative. I’ve seen maps like this before, but not done quite so well. Unfortunately, Smashing doesn’t tell us what software Time used to create the graphic.
This one here has some possibilities, though:
This is from a company called CrazyEgg. It sells an application that allows you to view your web pages with an infrared-like filter that visualizes where your traffic is reading and clicking.
Sure, you can use your web site’s statistics report to read this stuff in tabular form. But seeing your page like this would surely be helpful to any web designer. Kind of like a real-life EyeTrac.
Further down the page, Smashing mentions an online video that one of my artists, Miranda Mulligan, passed along to me a while back. The video — featuring Swedish professor Hans Rosling — is 20 minutes long, but man, is this totally jaw-dropping.
You want to see innovative use of data visualization? Check it out here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
The blurb at the TedTalks site describes it like this:
You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world” using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid — toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling’s hands, global trends — life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates — become clear, intuitive and even playful.
The software Rosling developed and uses to create these presentations is called Gapminder. Believe it or not, the application is free. Find it here:
http://www.gapminder.org/
While this one doesn’t really visualize data, it certainly presents it in an appealing way — much like the samples at the top of this post. The San Jose Mercury News web site posted this Wednesday, after Barry Bonds broke the career home run record:
Click on the label at left and the number pops onto the photo. Find it here:
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2007/bonds756/
Thanks to the Merc’s Martin Gee, who posted a link to this at SportsDesigner.
While we’re on this topic, here’s a site I’ve been messing around with a bit lately. There’s so much stuff there that I’m a bit overwhelmed by it all:
http://www.understandingusa.com/
This is apparently a promo to a book Richard Saul Wurman released in 1999. I have another of his infographics books at home — Information Architects. It’s quite good.
Some of the stuff at UnderstandingUSA is clever; some is just hard to read. This one here, for example, shows expenditures in the U.S. space program. What are the shapes? Why are they important? What are we comparing? I don’t have a clue.
(Yes, I know the labels are too small to read here. They’re larger on the site, but the visual still doesn’t work.)
It’s all worth looking at, though. And there’s lots of inspiration for those of us still working in a print environment.
So what interesting examples have you seen lately of innovative ways to present data?
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Read a bio of Rosling here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/90
Read Wurman’s description of his USA project here:
http://www.understandingusa.com/intro.html
Buy Wurman’s UnderstandingUSA — used — at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-USA-Richard-Saul-Wurman/dp/0967453607/ref=sr_1_2/102-0572227-2964150?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186493299&sr=8-2
Find that cool web site visualization tool at CrazyEgg:
http://crazyegg.com/
Find the Smashing Magazine article here:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/
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UPDATE:
Oops! Just discovered there is a thread at VizEds on this topic. Find it here:
http://www.visualeditors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6636