The lines between art, design, and information are dissolving as we experience new places and objects. Consider, for example, the organic flow of air traffic over North America at daybreak, the bursts of search query memes spreading around the globe, and the pointillist surge of mobile phone usage on New Year's Eve. Using the new techniques of generative data visualization, a new generation of artist/designers/engineer/scientists are creating gorgeous, dynamic experiences driven by massive sets of data about our own lives. Their work comes to life in architectural spaces, on walls of wood and metal and light and shimmering glass clouds suspended overhead. Of course it must be touched to be appreciated and engaged with, simple gestures launch a thousand images and possibilities. Many of these projects have received international recognition. They are primarily 3D applications that can run in real time, but really can only be appreciated by watching them, as movies. These data movies aim to make information easier to understand while being enjoyable to watch. Surprising insights surface through looking at our 'data life' in new ways, and may compel us to design in different, even better ways.
2. Outline
• Background (Joy Mountford)
• Data Visualisation (Java Processing movies of
working applications)
• Ubiquity is here (where is the interface?)
3. About Joy...
• Current: Osher Fellow at Exploratorium
• Recent :Yahoo,VP of Design Innovation and UED
• Properties: Y! Mail, Messenger, Front Page, My
Yahoo, Groups, Photos
• 21 years of international University Design Expo:
touched 4000 students world-wide
16. Opportunity....
• We can start ‘understanding’ real time data to show
what ‘we’ do/are
• Opportunity now is huge to actually use
information data corporations gather
• Uses are both consumer facing, and for internal
diagnostics, and to deliver useful content and
personalised services
17. McKinsey report 2009
• In next decades the ability to take data, to be
able to understand it, to process it, extract value,
to visualise and communication it, is going to be
an important skill in next decade.
• Not just at professional level, but all levels
• We have essentially free and ubiquitous data
• Scarce resource is ability to understand and
extract value
18. Statistics and graphs
• Long history of graphical communication
• “How to lie with statistics” etc....
• Selection of data parameters/styles depends on
task and who is asking for the answer
• Understanding of data displays is very individual
• What is a billion? (US/UK differ)
19. Data Numbers/Freq Visual Format
Data Visual Presentation User
Raw Data
Streams Style form Task
Data Visual View
Transformations Encodings Transformations
30. Two styles data
(Wattenberg)
• Voyager - focuses on visualised
data.
• Actively involved with data to
understand
• Voyeur - focuses on comment
listings
• Investigates others explorations
32. New England report
• Framingham study data, 1948
• 1948 10% obese
• 1985 18% obese
• 2009 40% obese
• Fast food started and then network took over
• Spouse obese increased risk by 37%
• Friend obese increased risk by 171%
35. Understanding Data
• Attraction of charts starts initial interest, but aim
to increase consumer engagement and exploration
• Goal to build user interfaces to support and
encourage involvement
• Visual sense making can be social - as well as
collaborative
49. Approach for Data Viz
• Data can attract
• Data can be ‘useful’
• Data can now be real time ‘dynamic’
• Put data around people to change POV
• Present in various forms
55. Y! Answers
• Use community to answer Qs
• Created vibrant on-line community pulse of ‘what is
happening’
• System created for accreditation of quality answers
• Potential for bloggers
66. Mail activity
• 2 hour increments of world-wide market traffic
• Shows relative sizes very clearly
• Showed Ham and Spam
• Located a server data loss from a pulse
• Aggregate view shows things otherwise ‘lost’
68. NYTE data
• Globe encounters show volumes of internet data
between NY and world over 24 hours
• Real time continuous update
• Larger glow implies greater IP flow
• Collaboration: Sensible cities MIT, ATT ,Y!
• MOMA New York show of live data, Feb 08
71. Search query bursts
• Active key word searches (rate of change)
• Use reverse IP look up for geo location-data
address locations
• Activity plotted as a particle system
• Time-lapse queries from geo-locations plotted
• Feasible in ‘real time’ for particular users’
interests
74. Data information
• Search moves to discovery (decision)
• Opportunity now to use real time data
• Internet business is about personal delivery of
useful, relevant content/ads dynamically to
consumers
76. Internet Archive (Kaehle)
• Machine readable versions of all out of print books - free
• Tool for librarians, museums and consumers
• Bookscape for image browsing
• Dynamic resampling of image data inside 1 zoomable space
79. Personal tools
• Tagging of limited use with large info sets
• Find all related information
• Search anonymously across those with similar
habits/interests
• Surface want I might want
81. Technical approach
• Tag co-occurrence defines distance algorithm
• Hierarchical clustering algorithm defines
dendrogram
• Recursively search dendrogram to find clusters of
optimal cohesion, while selecting a meaningful
human size
• Hierarchical clustering slower, but gives better
results with smaller data sets
82. Y!Haus lessons from
Data Viz
• Information can be provided in ambient personal
widgets
• Displays can be continuous, both in foreground as
well as background
• Animation gets initial interest, but goal is to
encourage understanding
84. Crowd potential
• Crowd sourcing powerful - not directly social
• Isolated but part of an anonymous group
• Little payment or reinforcement
• People want to contribute to the whole: with and
without anonymity
• Used Mechanical Turk (Amazon)
86. Draw sheep facing left for .02 cents
40 days for 10000 sheep (Koblin)
90. Consumers
• People want to extend their fame
• Hunger to understand themselves relative to others
• Some happy to participate anonymously, others
publically
• All of us becoming curators of own presence(s)
91. What and where is the
interface
• Ubiquitous computing is here
• Interface transparency arrived
• Art and maker community is forging ahead
• Technologists need to create safe ways of
convincing people to allow access to their
personal data for benefit
• Personal need for selective cloaking
92. Examples of user
‘inclusion’
• Unaware
• Partially shown with no choice
• Shown with choice
• Unclear effects
• Confusion
96. Screens at IAC
• 6-8 15ft high wall interactive displays
• NYU ITP graduate play space, some curated
• IAC headquarters, New York
• Web properties and media and newspaper taking lead
with new media
99. Moeller San Jose airport ’10:
pins on sheets over parking lot
99
127. User confusion
• How do I know what is being sensed?
• How do I know what I can use?
• How do I know what I am ‘in’ or ‘part of?’
• How do I stop being part of it? sometimes?
• Privacy crucial
• Cloak/veils to hide
129. We are all in the Design
• Interfaces are transparent and everywhere in the
physical world
• We are our own curators and reporters
• Data is pervasive, but difficult to know how best to
enhance understanding
• Issue: how do I know what I am part of, or not part
of, and then stop being part of it?