We are back after a relaxing summer with a brand new episode! We have Petra Isenberg, from the Aviz team at INRIA (we’ve had other guests from the same lab in the past) to talk about visualization on non-standard devices and environments. Yes, stuff like display walls, surfaces, tabletops, and people collaborating around them. It feels like the future is here and there’s a ton of potentially interesting applications for visualization!
Petra gives us hints about what works and what does not work, what the research says, what has been tried already, and what needs to be explored, etc. She also gives practical recommendations at the end about how to start doing visualization on these devices. Really cool stuff!
In this episode we talk about visualization on mobile and touch devices. How do you design visualization interfaces for these kinds of devices? How different is it to interact with your fingertips rather than with your mouse? Advantages, disadvantages, unexplored opportunities?
We discuss with Dominukus Baur, interaction designer and mobile data visualization specialist. You can see his work on his website/blog. Make sure to give a look to his talk at the OpenVis Conference: Data on Your FingerTips. He gives lots of useful tips!
Episode Chapters
00:00:00 Enrico and Mo go on vacations
00:02:28 Our guest: Dominikus Baur
00:04:06 Life logging and personal media
00:05:10 Accents
00:05:39 Why mobile visualization, and how is it different from desktop visualizations?
00:09:24 Mobile interaction
00:13:27 Mobiles for interaction with other displays
00:14:38 Augmented reality
00:15:54 TouchWave – touch interaction with stacked graphs
00:21:52 Multitouch
00:24:45 Analytical, advanced visualization on mobile?
00:26:44 Self-tracking and life logging
00:31:17 Daytum app
00:32:54 Other good mobile visualization apps
00:35:12 Second screen apps
00:36:28 Moritz wants an atlas
00:37:04 The age of ghettoblasters
00:38:00 Use mobiles to interact with large screens
00:41:48 Technology: native, or web-based?
00:46:07 Better Life Index: HTML5 port works on mobiles, tablets
00:48:00 Research on mobile and touch interactions
00:50:39 Large screens
00:58:54 How to get started
01:01:13 Dominikus will start a blog!!
Links
Dominikus’ TouchWave (rich interaction with stackgraphs)
In this episode we talk about the VAST Challenge, a visual analytics contest organized every year. The VAST Challenge is co-located with the IEEE VIS Conference, the premier venue for academic work in visualization.
The VAST Challenge has many unique features (like the generation of synthetic data sets with injected ground truth) and this year for the first time it features a predictive analytics and design mini-challenge. (Stephen Few has also discussed this too here.) You should definitely check it out.
We talk with Prof. Georges Grinstein from UMass Lowell and Celste Paul from NSA. They give us lots of details about how the data is generated, how the entries are evaluated and how it looks like participating to the contest.
You guys should actually give it a try and rock it!
In this episode we touch upon a tricky question: where is the fine line between taking inspiration from other projects and merely copying them? We discuss with Bryan Connor from The Why Axis and Mahir Yavuz from Seed Scientific.
Note: We suggest you give a look to the links below (under the heading “Cases We Discuss in the Podcast”) before listening to the podcast, most of the episode is centered around these examples we selected for discussion.
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Episode Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:56 Flattr
00:03:46 Main topic today: inspiration or plagiarism with our guests Mahir M. Yavuz and Bryan Connor
00:07:53 Is data visualization turning into a copycat scene?
00:08:32 Remake of subway map by New Yorker
00:13:19 Patterns
00:14:03 Idea – technology – aesthetics
00:16:06 Patterns ctd.
00:18:19 Gun murders – drone strikes – meteorites
00:23:19 What constitutes an “outrageous rip-off”?
00:27:31 On originality
00:33:07 Guardian Gay Rights / Gun Laws graphic
00:37:53 On the value of reproduction and chains of inspiration
00:44:01 Stream graphs
00:49:01 Value of transparent documentation of process
00:50:44 Non-patterns
00:53:13 Remix culture, github culture
00:54:48 Snow fall
00:58:04 Patents
01:01:47 A new language for citation in design?
01:09:36 Closing remarks
We have graphic editors Mike Bostock and Shan Carter in this dense and long episode. It’s great to finally have someone from the New York Times!
We talk about many practical and more philosophical aspects of publishing interactive visualizations on the web. We also spend quite some time discussing the past, present and future of D3.js.
(On a side note: apologies for starting a bit abruptly and for the weird noises. Enrico was desperately and unsuccessfully trying to find a quiet and calm spot at the CHI conference.)
Take Care,
Enrico & Mo.
P.S. Many thanks to all of you guys who sent us Twitter questions for Mike and Shan.
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Episode Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:12 Our guests today: New York Times graphics editors Mike Bostocks and Shan Carter
00:01:54 About the NYT graphics department
00:06:56 Map wrangling
00:08:47 QA, evaluation, fact checking,…
00:11:23 Twitter question: Post the data set along with the graphic?
00:15:51 Exploratory or explanatory?
00:19:56 User tracking, user feedback
00:25:53 Balance of familiarity vs. new visual vocabularies
00:29:52 Workflow, on the example of the 512 paths graphic
00:38:05 Hybrid workflows between automation and manual layout
00:45:12 d3
00:45:49 History and philosophy
00:56:19 Value of examples
00:57:31 Community adoption
00:59:25 Vega
01:04:53 More d3 books or tutorials for advanced users?
01:08:15 Developer community
01:09:45 Sustainability
01:11:51 Future development
01:15:10 Enrico is back!
01:16:13 Is d3 complete?
01:18:52 When does Mike sleep?
01:19:45 Wrapping it up
We have two fantastic guests to talk about using visualization for the good. We actually decided to make it even bigger and provokingly titled it: can visualization save the world?
We have on stage: Kim Rees co-founder of Periscopic, a data visualization company guided by the motto: “do good with data,” and Jake Porway, founder of Data Kind, an organization that brings together data scientists and social organizations.
We discuss the challenges of working in this world of big data opportunities and the risks and potentially negative implications of using big data.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro, welcome to our guests Kim Rees (Periscopic) and Jake Porway (Datakind)
00:01:39 Can data visualization save the world?
00:04:44 Periscopic
00:05:38 Jake & Datakind
00:09:32 Visualization as a process
00:15:17 How do you pick projects to work on?
00:18:01 Periscopic’s U.S. gun deaths visualization
00:30:08 Awareness alone does not help – how you get people to action?
00:32:57 On process
00:40:12 Multiple truths in same data
00:42:53 Responsible authorship
00:45:19 Parallels between data visualization and “photo journalism”?
00:46:12 Responsible data and visualization authorship ctd.
00:50:03 Project votesmart
00:51:39 NYT graphics jobs report
00:53:15 Success stories?
01:05:33 Refuse to work for potentially unethic clients?
01:08:28 “The dark side of datakind”
01:09:06 Back to original question 🙂
01:13:18 Concerns in visualizing personal stories
01:24:59 Wrapping it up
In this episode we talk about maps and map technology. How it evolved and revolutionized the way we think about geography. We have Michal Migurski with us! He is former technology head at Stamen and creator of multiple successful visualizations libraries and tools like Modest Maps and Crimespotting.
Episode Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:06 Our guest: Mike Migurski
00:04:45 How did Mike get started with computers?
00:06:16 Raving in the 90s
00:07:02 The beginnings of Stamen
00:13:49 Oakland Crimespotting
00:14:58 A short history of online mapping
00:17:04 Google maps
00:20:19 Open Street Map
00:24:31 Everyblock
00:26:51 Oakland Crimespotting pt.2
00:32:42 Tools and frameworks – modest maps
00:34:29 Polymaps
00:36:30 Cloudmade
00:38:23 Leaflet.js
00:39:57 Mapnik
00:43:12 d3.geo
00:46:17 How to make geo data accessible in a better way
00:49:56 Automatic labeling
00:51:39 @alignedleft: What is a map tile?
00:55:42 @janwillemtulp: Question on process and inspiration, future trend
00:58:07 @petersonGIS: time ratio data processing vs visualization
01:02:57 Wrapping it up
We have Santiago Ortiz with us today. Santiago has an impressive array of data visualization projects he has been pouring out during the last year and a very unique style. See for yourself in his portfolio website: http://moebio.com/. We talk about the Tapestry Conference, mathematics, the business of data visualization and much much more. Enjoy it!
Chapters
00:00:00 Start
00:00:01 Intro: our guest today: Santiago Ortiz (@moebio)
00:01:55 Tapestry conference
00:08:40 Santiago: how it all began: Flash, math and teaching
00:11:34 Bestiario
00:13:23 Impure/Quadrigram
00:14:17 Freelance since 2012
00:17:12 Yay for self-inititated projects!
00:20:56 Knowledge visualization
00:25:11 “Santiago style”
00:26:36 Client work
00:31:18 Tools, frameworks, open source
00:40:52 On process
00:51:47 Non-information-based projects
00:55:23 The role of math
01:06:41 Regional differences in the data visualization scenes?
01:17:13 Wrapping it up
What can we say? One year has passed and it looks crazy we have been doing this thing for a whole year: 18 whole episodes. Thanks a lot everyone for your encouragements and numerous comments and suggestions. And big thanks to all the people who participated!
In this episode we review the whole set of posts and comment on them trying to see how they look like from a distance now that some time has passed.
If you have any suggestions on stuff you would like to see in DS in the next year LET US KNOW!
Chapters:
00:00:00 Happy Birthday Data Stories!
00:02:19 On naming episodes and the Andy effect
00:04:44 01: Animated Data Kitsch
00:06:54 02: Ranting about marathons, challenges and awards
00:09:45 03: Evaluation
00:15:11 04: Malofiej
00:17:27 05: Learning data visualization with Andy Kirk
00:21:22 06: Food
00:22:49 07: Color
00:23:25 08: Interview with Jeff Heer
00:24:51 09: Bridging academia and industry
00:25:41 10: Stefanie Posavec
00:26:49 11: emoto
00:27:29 12: Alberto Cairo
00:29:52 13: visweek
00:31:20 14: Google hangout episode
00:33:22 15: Robert Kosara
00:35:27 16: 2012 review
00:37:24 17: Data Sculptures
00:38:52 What’s up next
Pierre and Yvonne give several demos you can see on our recorded video. Make sure you don’t miss Pierre giving a real-time demo of Jacques Bertin’s reorderable matrix!
Episode Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:08 Topic: Data Sculptures with Yvonne Jansen and Pierre Dragicevic
00:04:01 Studies on legibility of physical 3D data visualizations
00:12:45 Pros and cons of rapid prototyping vs. subsurface engraving
00:16:57 Broader perspective: How did Pierre and Yvonne get Pierre and Yvonne’s motivation, and general characterization of the field
00:22:04 Their project collections at: http://www.aviz.fr/Research/PassivePhysicalVisualizations and http://www.aviz.fr/Research/ActivePhysicalVisualizations
00:27:26 Bertin’s reorderable matrix
00:35:00 Slow data
00:37:30 Back to Bertin and physical manpulation of data
00:39:04 Social aspects
00:39:47 Future perspective
00:41:21 Digital fabrication techniques
00:49:45 Online services
00:50:27 FabLabs
00:54:17 Accessibility aspects
00:55:33 Practical applications
00:57:54 Shapeshifting displays and materials
01:05:46 Early examples and the great books from W. Brinton
