Posts Tagged ‘data’

  • 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)

    Data as Seductive Material, Spring Summit, Umeå March09 View more documents from Matt Jones.

    This presentation is full of great stuff, visual treats and strong thinking. Matt connects Seduction – perhaps the magic that Ben is talking about in his post – with data visualisation. This came at just the right time for me as I was reading:

    The Art and Science of Seductive Interactions by Stephen P Anderson. This presentation affected me than anything else I’ve seen online for a VERY LONG TIME. It made me realise the poisonous legacy of Jakob Nielsen was still inside me. It crystallised a thought that had been forming since we started MxM up inside an ad agency 19 months ago, about something we’ve been learning from them – namely, the need for the things we make not merely to be rationally efficient in a strict usability sense, but to move the end user, to delight, to quicken the pulse. Once again, this is the magic Ben talks about.

    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.

    2 Comments

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    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    6th May 09

    2 comments

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  • The Web as a Column of The Ocean

    I’ve been struggling to find the right metaphor to describe how the Web has suddenly changed. I don’t think I’ve cracked it but here goes – please let me know what you think.

    In my mind’s eye I picture a vast, deep ocean of static, archived content.

    Abyssal.

    Still.

    Vast.

    Far above, a sparkling, shimmering layer of light and life and frantic activity. They call it The Pelagic Zone.

    At the very top, in the seething surface layer of the Epipelagic the Web is a boiling mass of life. A rising storm of thrashing users. An unimaginably massive number of interactions. The waters are hot. Currents flow fast. Waves crash and spume flies as millions of short messages rip back and forth across the surface. Links and people collide in a foamy chaos of tangling and untangling networks.

    The tide of the century is in full flood.

    This top layer – the scalding Photic cauldron of short messages and streaming data visualisations – is where it’s at. The top layer has become a lens for finding content further down. The surface is now where I look for new stuff, where I ask questions (search) and where I discover the vast Web of  sites, pages, documents and content hanging lower down in the depths. This layer is connected to that which lurks below through trillions of filaments and capillaries.

    Within the Mesopealgic (a thick social layer extending downwards from the Photic into the darkness) is The Web of Blogs. And as you travel deeper and deeper down through our column, through the Bathypelagic, there are bigger, more static, more structured, increasingly siloed and closed websites. Until you hit the vast invisible Web of pages and sites that few visit. They’re down there, you discover them by chance.

    Data rains down like nutrients, feeding the whole ecosystem.

    11 Comments

    11
    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    5th May 09

    11 comments

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