Data visualisation is the new rock’n'roll

Data. It’s the word on everyone’s lips and… err fingertips. Yes, we all dream about getting our hands dirty with data nowadays. I’ve read a number of excellent blog posts and seen some killer presentations on the subject over the past few days and I thought I’d share. Because sharing is *good*.

The Battle Between Art & The Algorithm (by my brother Ben at BBH Labs). In this post Ben provocatively suggests that the rise and rise of algorithmically powered recommendation is robbing us of serendipity: “We’re talking about the end of surprise.” Having taken us to the edge of despair he then highlights some examples of things working pretty well (AKQA’s Halo 3 work, anything by Jonathan Harris – especially We Feel Fine.) What a tease.

Data as Seductive Material (by designer Matt Jones, co-founder of Dopplr)

The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions

View more presentations from Stephen Anderson.

I found another great deck at Michal Migurski’s blog. Mike is a technical architect at Stamen Design – the group that did the Digg Labs data visualisations, and the Flickr Mappr tool, and the Adobe Kuler stuff, and the MySociety Travel Maps for Commuters… yeah, you get the idea. They’re good.

Slideshare was having a bad day when Mike wrote his post – so if you click the image above you’ll link through to his site where you can download the PDF. I totally recommend this – it’s packed with beautiful and stimulating stuff. I particularly enjoyed:

Live Vast and Deep

The iron triangle of information visualization
“Live”: our favorite projects demonstrate data that is, ideally, being generated as you watch it.
“Vast”: data can cover an enormous surface area, think Google Maps
“Deep”: data is dense, interlinked

That’s it for now. Please send us details of any other sources of inspiration. As Bud Cadell said in a comment earlier:

Data visualization designers will be the new rockstars in 2010.

I think that’s absolutely true. And I think I might be a groupie.