The Social Life of Visualizations

I thought I’d pass this along since we’re all interested in visualization and data visualization…

HCIL Seminar Series Presents:

Speaker: Martin Wattenberg, IBM Research, http://www.bewitched.com/research.html

Where: 3258 AV Williams Bldg, University of Maryland , College Park

When: Tuesday November 7th, 12:30pm

Talk: The Social Life of Visualizations

Abstract:

Visualization is often viewed as an efficient way of getting information out of a database and into an individual’s head. I argue that the value of many visualizations derives instead from their position in social systems involving two or more people. Through a series of examples from both science and art, I will discuss how this viewpoint leads to new directions, questions and design principles.

Bio:

Martin Wattenberg is a research scientist at IBM, where he leads the Visual Communication Lab. His work focuses on new approaches to data visualization and collaboration. He is known for both applied and artistic visualizations, interpreting such disparate information sources as online communities, music, baby names, and stock market data. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley.

Please visit: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/about/events/seminar-series.shtml, For more information.

Tags: [hcil, data visualization, visualization, University of Maryland, IBM, visual communication, analytics, tufte, UXperience]

Tufte in DC

This from Dan…

“During my talk at the last UX Week in August, I mentioned Edward Tufte, who has done lots of work in the area of information visualization. (You may have seen PeterMe’s review of Tufte’s new book Beautiful Evidence on his site - here, here, and here.) Tufte’s work can inform how we
develop user experience documentation.

Tufte will be giving his workshop in the DC area Nov 14-16 this year at the Marriott Crystal Forum. I *highly* recommend this session. The session is a full day, and costs $360. This includes ALL FOUR BOOKS!

You can learn more about his workshop here:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

If you do attend, please let me know! Perhaps DCIA will host a happy hour in which attendees can share what they learned!”

Tags: [Edward Tufte, Tufte, visualization, Beautiful Evidence]

Gapminder

In a previous post, I embedded a Google video that showed a presentation of data in a superb way.

The tool used to display this complex information, particularly to show changes over time, is called Gapminder. It seems you can easily play around with it since Google hosts the tool:

Gapminder

Tags: [Gapminder, data visualization]

Best Practices - Data Visualization

I’m not sure if you are familiar with TED, but one speaker presented data in a way that was both elegant and simple at the same time. Here’s the brief bio:

“Hans Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life.” (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)

[Runtime: 20:33 | Please make sure you have the latest version of Macromedia Flash installed on your computer to watch this video. To download it, please visit: http://www.macromedia.com ]

Business Intelligence and Data Visualization

I’ve been working on a data/business intelligence project for the company, and in the process of thinking about some BI solutions, Zach pointed me to a tool called Tableau.

Our group has been discussing data visualization, and since the data project I am working on might move towards recommending a reporting tool, I wondered what your impressions are of this tool.

Demo here

Example of output for satisfaction data here

In the meantime, Juice Analytics recommends a quick little Excel fix that can make charts more Tufte-compliant.

Tags: [Tableau Software, Business Intelligence, BI, data visualization, UXperience]

Example of Good Presentation of Data