Posts tagged “visualization”

ChittahChattah Quickies

Take Care of Your Little Notebook [nybooks.com] – This piece reflects on (and gently romanticizes) the instant, tangible, temporal act of jotting down a note. Jotting does validate a thought, document the moment and capture it for future reflection by self or others. The writer suggests that ink on paper is somehow more permanent, or at least more accessible, than similarly documented digital thoughts. The piece relies on the conceit that analogue note-jotting is perilously endangered; this seems exaggerated to me.

Writing with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper is becoming an infrequent activity, even for those who were once taught the rigorous rules of penmanship in grade school and hardly saw a day go by without jotting down a telephone number or a list of food items to buy at the market on the way home, and for that purpose carried with them something to write with and something to write on…No question, one can use a smart phone as an aid to memory, and I do use one myself for that purpose. But I don’t find them a congenial repository for anything more complicated than reminding myself to pick up a pair of pants from the cleaners or make an appointment with the cat doctor. If one has the urge to write down a complete thought, a handsome notebook gives it more class. Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil are more preferable for philosophizing than typing the same words down, since writing a word out, letter by letter, is a more self-conscious process and one more likely to inspire further revisions and elaborations of that thought…Just think, if you preserve them, your grandchildren will be able to read your jewels of wisdom fifty years from now, which may prove exceedingly difficult, should you decide to confine them solely to a smart phone you purchased yesterday.

Revolution in a Can [foreignpolicy.com] – Has Western graffiti standardized itself into a visual language that is easily exportable, a global commodity? I disagree with some of his assertions – that Western graffiti is merely aesthetic, that graffiti expressions are cliched and “tired” – but the idea that graffiti has been appropriated by Middle Eastern and other very different cultures around the world as a visual form to communicate back to us on recognizable cultural terms is provocative.

…it does seem clear that the stylistic clichés of graffiti in the West — the huge loopy letters, the exaggerated shadows dropped behind a word — have become an international language that can be read almost transparently, for the content those clichés transmit. Look at New York-style graffiti letters spelling “Free Libya” on a wall in Benghazi or proclaiming “revolution” in Tahrir Square: Rather than aiming at a new aesthetic effect, they take advantage of an old one that’s so well-known it barely registers. That thing called “art” in the West is essentially an insider’s game, thrilling to play but without much purchase on the larger reality outside. We have to look at societies that are truly in crisis to be reminded that images — even images we have sometimes counted as art — can be used for much more than game-playing.

ChittahChattah Quickies

Analog Infoviz: Handmade Visualization Toolkit [brainpickings.org] – Columbian designer Jose Duarte creates fresh DIY lo-fi information visualizations, expressed “in the wild,” using a basic toolkit. What do you think – how does this treatment affect the data, versus a standard pie-chart or a slick design-pornish infographic (IMHO, a trend verging on the overbearing. This was reinforced when the trend spawned the term infauxgraphic to describe cases where the visual treatment takes primacy over the accuracy of the information.)?

Using ordinary materials like chalk, string, stickers and balloons, you can experiment with various visualization techniques, from area charts to bubble graphs to – yes, you guessed it – Venn diagrams. Using the kit, he made these lovely lo-fi visualizations of data from the 2010 State of the Internet report, revealing, among other things, that Lady Gaga is bigger on Twitter than Obama and the majority of the world’s email volume is spam.

Above is just one example – the article has plenty of others…and an offer for a free Handmade Visualization Toolkit of your own!

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from julienorvaisas] Invasion of the body hackers [FT.com / FT Magazine] – [Opportunities for data visualization abound! I find these trends simultaneously compelling and terrifying.] Over the last weekend of May, in the heart of Silicon Valley, 400 “Quantified-Selfers” from around the globe have gathered to show off their Excel sheets, databases and gadgets. Participants are mostly middle to upper class, mostly white. Europe is well represented. There are plenty of nerdy young men, nerdy older men and extremely fit men and women with defined muscles and glowing skin. There is also a robust contingent of young urban hipsters in military boots, hoodies and elaborate tattoos. A quiet middle-aged man walks around with a pulse monitor clipped to his earlobe, a blood pressure cuff on his arm and a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest, all feeding a stream of data to his walkie-talkie-like computer. Someone from the UK unrolls a 12ft line graph charting the fluctuations in his mood over the previous year.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from julienorvaisas] Data Visualization/Communication [Lauren Manning Design] – [Manning has done a lot of work to provide these instructive visualizations. The approaches privilege different aspects of the data. Which ones tell the strongest story? I am a fan of those that include actual images of the foods; they seem to require one layer less to decode. French Fry Consumption by Month is terrific!] Data sets vary tremendously, so one man’s brilliant solution can be another’s complete failure. Instead of seeing many excellent visualizations of all different data sets, what if you could see tons of visualizations of the same data set? Using a data set created from two years of meticulous life documenting, I visualized one point of data – food consumed – over forty ways. Exploring various methods, techniques, styles, degrees of complexity, degrees of additional context and many other elements, a true “apples to apples” comparison has emerged.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from steve_portigal] The WhatWasThere Project – [It's exciting to see these sort of audacious projects start to emerge and to actually believe that they are possible. There's already a wealth of similar data on Flickr and presumably on Facebook as well; is there a way to tap into the existing data ethically?] The WhatWasThere project was inspired by the realization that we could leverage technology and the connections it facilitates to provide a new human experience of time and space – a virtual time machine of sorts that allows users to navigate familiar streets as they appeared in the past. The premise is simple: provide a platform where anyone can easily upload a photograph with two straightforward tags to provide context: Location and Year. If enough people upload enough photographs in enough places, together we will weave together a photographic history of the world (or at least any place covered by Google Maps). So wherever you are in the world, take a moment to upload a photograph and contribute to history!

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from julienorvaisas] Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful [Mashable] – [This will be fun! It stands to reason that treating QR Codes as a design element rather than slapping the ugly things on will improve uptake. Better response can be encouraged through visual stimulation, then designers will have to encourage people to download an app, learn it, and get in the habit of using it as another set of related experiences to design well.] Creating branded QR codes is as much art as it is science. The mathematical qualities of a QR code and the impact of a clever design can truly elevate a QR code to the point where the code becomes the central artwork of a piece of marketing collateral. Applying designer best practices will enhance scanning conversion rates and effectively augment an offline item with online capabilities. Knowing how to innovate both in technology and design, and how to implement a QR code in the right way for your business, will keep your brand on the cutting edge of marketing and technology.
  • [from steve_portigal] Tech mogul? Nope. Any old hack will do. [WaPo] – [The lead stat is enticing but I suspect is grossly skewed/misleading] Recent studies show consumers spend more money tweaking and inventing stuff than consumer product firms spend on R&D. It’s more than $3.75 billion a year in Britain, and U.S. studies under way now show similar patterns. Makers are even morphing into entrepreneurs, with some of the best projects raising money for commercial development uvia self-funding Web sites such as Kickstarter. Major companies such as Ford are, after years of resisting inventor gadflies, inviting makers to submit product tweaks. “This is the democratization of technology,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, a senior engineering executive at Ford. “Policymakers and economists always assumed that consumers just consumed and that they don’t innovate,” said Eric von Hippel, who studies technological innovation and makers at MIT. “What’s clearly happening now is that all of a sudden it’s easier for us to make exactly what we want.” [via PuttingPeopleFirst]

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from julienorvaisas] Overwhelmed Online Shoppers in UK Can Justbuythisone [Advertising Age] – [Beta site leverages online reviews of many products to lead online shoppers directly to a product.] The explosion of consumer choice makes the internet a giant playground for some, but for the many people who find themselves paralyzed by too many options, Justbuythisone.com is coming. It offers consumers the opportunity to "stop shopping and start enjoying life" by providing just one search result for each category of electrical goods. So if you're looking for a TV for less than $500 it will tell you which one to buy, and give you three concise reasons why. Kyle McGinn was part of the team that came up with the idea during an offline brainstorming week. "We knew that 25% of people are overwhelmed by the choice on price comparison sites and inspired by TED talks on the paradox of choice and the need to sweat the small stuff, we decided to create something utterly simple and extremely useful." It is also built around principles of data visualization.

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