Happy 2014!
Here we go folks. Another year has passed. We review what was big and major trends in 2013 and what to expect in 2014.
We have two old DS friends on the show to help us with the review: Andy “Visualisingdata” Kirk and Robert “Eagereyes” Kosara.
Important announcement: in 2014 we want to hear more from you! Please feel free to contact us to ask questions, we will address them in our upcoming podcasts. You can also suggest new guests or topics you would like us to cover. You can reach us through: Twitter (@datastories) | Facebook | Email: mail@datastori.es. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Take care.
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Links
Hi there,
We have Marian Dörk on the show today to talk about the “Information Flaneur”: an approach to data visualization centered on navigating, exploring, browsing and observing data with curiosity to learn about what’s there, and to see and be surprised by new thoughts and discoveries.
Marian is Research Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam near Berlin where he works on “exploring novel uses of interactive visualizations to support a wide range of information practices.”
We talk about many interesting new directions for visualization like visualizing data starting from a few seed points, whether we always need an overview first in visualization, and tips on how to design visualization for “information flaneurs.”
Enjoy the show!
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Links
Hi Everyone,
We have a super guest this time on the show! Ben Shneiderman joins us to talk about his new treemap art project (beautiful treemap prints you can hang on the wall), treemaps and their history, and information visualization in general. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time chatting with him: lots of history and very inspiring thoughts (tip: we should look at vis 50-100 years from now!)
Take care.
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Links
Papers
- Bruls, Mark, Kees Huizing, and Jarke J. Van Wijk. “Squarified treemaps.” Data Visualization 2000. Springer Vienna, 2000. 33-42. [First algorithm taking care of aspect ratio]
- Bederson, Benjamin B., Ben Shneiderman, and Martin Wattenberg. “Ordered and quantum treemaps: Making effective use of 2D space to display hierarchies.” AcM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) 21.4 (2002): 833-854. [paper with extensive evaluation of alternative treemap layouts]
- Ahlberg, Christopher, Christopher Williamson, and Ben Shneiderman. “Dynamic queries for information exploration: An implementation and evaluation.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 1992.
Hi Folks!
We did it again: we have a special episode directly from IEEE VIS’13 (the premier academic conference on visualization). Enrico caught Robert Kosara and recorded almost one hour of highlights from the conference. And there is a final message for Moritz too! Don’t miss it.
Take care.
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Links (some of the papers mentioned):
Related episodes
Here we go with another great episode. This time more on the data side. We have Kate Crawford, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, on the show talking about the other face of big data. That is, after all the excitement, hype, and buzz, she is the one who is asking the tough questions: Is more data always better? Is there any objective truth in it? Is big data really making us smarter?
Papers and articles from Kate
- Boyd, D. and Crawford, K. 2012 ‘Critical Questions for Big Data‘, Information, Communication and Society, Volume 15, no 5, pp 662-679.
- Crawford, K. and Schultz, J. 2014 ‘Big Data and Due Process: Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms‘, Boston College Law Review, Vol. 55, No. 1.
- “The Hidden Biases in Big Data” (Harvard Business Review)
- “Think Again: Big Data” (Foreign Policy)
Some of Kate’s Talks
Links
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Enjoy it, there’s lots of food for thoughts here!
Related episodes
Hi Folks!
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!
Take care,
Enrico & Mo.
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Chapters
- 00:00 Back from summer break
- 02:41 Our guest today: Petra Isenberg
- 05:59 Moving beyond the desktop
- 11:55 New challenges in collaborative settings
- 22:25 Interactions with very large screens
- 38:14 Practical use and how to get started
- 48:53 More resources
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Links and papers:
Resource list from Petra
Research links:
Technology links:
Software frameworks/libraries for developing vis on surfaces:
- Most Pixels Ever (Processing for very large wall displays – I forgot to mention this one during the podcast)
- kivy (Python framework for developing multi-touch applications)
- libavg (maintained by Ulrich von Zadow who has worked on several visualization + interactive surface installations)
- ZVTM (Java toolkit for developing ZUIs, includes possibilities to run visualizations on a cluster)
- Microsoft Surface SDK
- (for mobile check out iOS and Android SDKs)
Hi Everyone,
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
Business Intelligence iPad Apps
Presentation Apps
Research
Hi Everyone,
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!
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[Sorry no episode chapters this time]
Links
Papers
- Plaisant, Catherine, J-D. Fekete, and Georges Grinstein. Promoting insight-based evaluation of visualizations: From contest to benchmark repository. Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 14.1 (2008): 120-134.
- Pascale Proulx and Casey Canfield. The beneficial role of the VAST Challenges in the evolution of GeoTime and nSpace2. Information Visualization. May 10, 2013 preprint
- Christian Rohrdantz, Florian Mansmann, Chris North, and Daniel A Keim. Augmenting the educational curriculum with the Visual Analytics Science and Technology Challenge: Opportunities and pitfalls. Information Visualization. April 11, 2013 preprint
- Jean Scholtz, Catherine Plaisant, Mark Whiting, and Georges Grinstein. Evaluation of visual analytics environments: The road to the Visual Analytics Science and Technology challenge evaluation methodology. Information Visualization. June 11, 2013 preprint
- Costello, Loura, et al. Advancing user-centered evaluation of visual analytic environments through contests. Information Visualization 8.3 (2009): 230-238.
Hi Folks!
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
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Cases We Discuss in the Podcast
New Yorker’s Inequality Subway Map
Periscopic’s Dramatic Animation of Gun Murders
Guardian’s Gay Rights Radial Visualization
Streamgraphs
More Examples (not discussed)
Good Related Reads
Links
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Thanks a lot to Bryan and Mahir for this intense, controversial and funny chat!
Take care,
Enrico and Moritz.
Related episodes
Hi everyone,
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
Links to discussed NYT projects
Related episodes
