Data visualization as multi-media narrative

April 28, 2012By carlainformation, interactives, news

I’ve been on a multimedia kick lately, digging for interesting examples of how journalists are telling their stories via this interesting catch-all for pictures, animations and all things that move with words. A multimedia interactive timeline produced back in September, 2010 persists, in my view, as a stellar example. Yes, that was over a year-and-a-half ago, but I challenge you to find anything this good that has come out since.

El Mundo, a Spanish newspaper with a very good data visualization design team, created an interactive data visualization/multi-media narrative recreating the attempts to rescue Chilean miners trapped in the copper-gold mine near Copiapó in August 5, 2010 “Rescate de los mineros chilenos atrapados bajo tierra” (“Rescue of Chilean Miners Trapped Underground”).

Created a month after the successful rescue this piece by David Almeda successfully deconstructs the messy reality of three rescue plans, changing information on the ground, technical obstacles and engineering solutions, as well as the human faces behind the crisis. If I counted correctly, there are about 30 animated frames in this, several of which contain infographics polished enough to be published in their own right. The only thing I’d add to this would be a scrubber with a timeline to allow users to move through this at their own pace and to get a sense of the timing.

This is a solid interactive and a beautifully understated display of process, timelines and information. In our ongoing fascination with data visualization, this reminds me of why I started this blog.

Conflict underground: What’s up with Argentina’s subways (infographic)

April 26, 2012By carlainformation, interactives

La Nación, a newspaper in Argentina, created an infographic about problems plaguing the “subte” (subway). Some problems are universal, aren’t they? I think it’s safe to say that anyone on the planet with access to trains and airplanes is bound to complain about both.

In “Los conflictos bajo tierra” (“Conflict underground”) the designer, Florencia Abd, was tasked with showing–on which hours, days and months during the year–subway service was disrupted by four types of labor strikes: a work stoppage across all lines (red), a stoppage for one line only (black), a suspension of card renewals (yellow), and the closure of entrance/exit turnstiles (blue).

Take a look at how nicely the designer solved the logistical nightmare (pun intended, sort of) in laying out various levels of time (hours, days, months and peak travel times) as well as frequency (how often problems occurred) and categorization (which types of problems). It’s a terrific infographic–simplifies complex data in a way that is immediately easy to understand.

I’d love to hear how others would redesign this very, very good infographic. It begs a few different approaches.

Good old fashioned shoe-leather multimedia journalism

April 26, 2012By carlainteractives

There’s so much about multimedia that washes over me, almost on a daily basis. I tend to tune out fancier versions of video/audio/slideshow shenanigans for the most part, unless they are as they should be: a dialed down, behind the scenes approach that seamlessly and quietly facilitates the engagement of the user and the experience. And, just my luck, I stumble across a very good example of this, after the project has gone dark (January 2012). But not completely.

Founded in part by Alex Wood, an up-and-coming digital journalist, Not on the Wires remains a solid showcase of shoe-leather journalism augmented by technology. There’s nothing fancy about the approach, and that’s why it works.

It’s polished, but the technology doesn’t get in the way of the storytelling–related stories, videos and audio appear where they’re needed and allow the journalists quietly and powerfully proceed on his and her way. You could spend a few hours on this site. I hope you do.

Time travel in Argentina: a new take on interactive timelines

April 24, 2012By carlaart, interactives

Argentina. Alfajores, Maradona, steak and tango? Yes. A burgeoning data visualization community? Yep. In my occasionally quixotic quest to find out what data viz developers are up to in Latin America, I stumbled across Hacks | Hackers – Buenos Aires.

It seems that they’re drumming up some interesting projects, though nothing concrete to date, though I am looking forward to writing more about their progress. That said, Sandra Crucianelli, a recipient of the noted Knight Foundation fellowship, presented some terrific examples of data visualization projects in Latin America.

One worth mentioning is Proyecto Walsh, an interactive timeline/journalistic experiment which recreates Rodolfo Walsh’s 1956-57 expose on the illegal executions of Peron sympathizers, “Operación Masacre” (Operation Massacre) as an interactive timeline. Well, it’s much more than an interactive timeline but, to me, the timeline is a great hook.

The zoom feature on the interactive timeline, which most of us are more used to seeing in spatial relationships on maps (think: zoom to your house or zoom away to view a city) is used temporally (think: zooming in to a minute; zooming out to a month).

Conceived by journalists Alvaro Liuzzi and Vanina Berghella, this project uses this slick timeline feature as effective navigation through various layers of multimedia, ranging from interactive maps using, of course, Google Maps, to a photo gallery using the Google image search function. It’s fairly complex, and tells the story well. Even if you don’t understand Spanish, it’s worth exploring.

Bicycling in tranquility: Madrid map

April 24, 2012By carlaart

There’s a certain beauty to be seen, and heard, when you stubbornly translate Spanish into English. By stubborn, I mean not how you *know* a phrase should translate (meaning, you are aware of the original author’s intent and honor it accordingly). But rather, how you *insist* on translating a phrase, mostly because a direct and literal translation of your native tongue somehow feels more loyal, more true, and sounds better, if not as accurate. For those of us who visualize information, this sounds like a familiar dilemma, and one I’ve written about before. To be right, or to be accurate? In this case, to be beautiful, or to be true?

I’ve chosen to translate this simple bicycling map as “Tranquil Streets for Bicycling Through Madrid.” It’s perplexing, but not disconcerting, that the map is designed in black, like a constellation map. Kind of adds to the beauty, in my opinion.

It takes a few minutes for the map to download. Take your time, wait it out, and imagine yourself rolling along, bicycling in tranquility. Enjoy.

An interactive visualization for Chile’s Disappeared

April 23, 2012By carlainteractives

On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet began a 17-year dictatorship in Chile that resulted in thousands of politically-related deaths and hundreds of individuals who mysteriously disappeared with no explanation given by the government. These people are known as Chile’s “disappeared.” An interactive map created by ArchivosChile (loosely translated as ArchivesChile) and developer Gabriel Mérida shows how many of these and other politically-motivated, government-sponsored murders occurred between September and December, 1973, the start of Pinochet’s regime.

People are still searching

It is particularly poignant that this map, essentially a data visualization mash-up of GoogleMaps and data from Chile’s “Servicio Medico Legal” (Medical Legal Services office) has as one of its core navigation items a query box where one may search by a victim’s name. As in, people are still searching. One may also search by city.

It’s relatively intuitive (given it’s objective, it has to be). One of the most compelling features is the “play” option that allows you to simply sit back and watch the dramatic and unfortunate escalation of deaths within these four short months.

The interactive is surprisingly text-based, but does the job. The silhouette icons that point to each victim are a bit clunky and obscure the actual numbers when you arrive at the default zoom view–something that a smaller visual (an “x,” a dot, a square) could have avoided. But once you zoom in by city block, they become a powerful reminder of why you are, indeed, interacting with this map. Clicking on each victim displays a pop-up which helpfully displays the victim’s name, cause of death, source, medical examiner and other data.

Puzzlingly, the legend is displayed as a dropdown, which takes away from the intuitiveness of the map. But overall, it gets the grim job done.

Doing Minard one better? Reinventing Tufte’s favorite information graphic

April 22, 2012By carlainformation, interactives

To many, Edward Tufte is best known for his dogged and unwavering promotion of Charles Joseph Minard’s Napoleon’s March to Moscow graphic as the perfect form of information visualization. That, and those swanky flyers that he sends out through the mail. Until I attended Tufte’s seminar a few years ago, I was ashamed to admit that I had never given that graphic more than a cursory glance. Once I did, however, it took me five or ten minutes to really understand it. And I was kind of turned off by that. So I’ll add my voice to the growing chorus of those that disagree with Tufte. But I’ll be less articulate. I just didn’t understand it, plain and simple. That’s actually one of reasons that I started this blog. Is there such a thing as the perfect visualization of information?

Of course there isn’t. And anyone who insists otherwise merely has a strong opinion.

So, if you accept that, then there’s the issue of, for each piece that we create, where is the sweet spot between accuracy and getting our message across? That’s a messy answer, in my opinion. I always want to be accurate, but if it’s at the expense of losing my audience, or making them work too hard to understand what I’m attempting to convey, it’s on me, the designer/developer, to take a step back and either try a different approach or rethink whether the project is worth doing.

So, imagine my delight when I found the site of Michael Friendly, a professor of statistics and noted author on data visualization at York University, who would like to do Minard one better. He issued a challenge to data visualization developers:

Can we re-draw it in some modern programming language? What does this tell us about comparative power and simplicity of various programming languages and environments?

The visualizations that are featured in Friendly’s site are fascinating attempts to recreate and re-imagine this graphic by today’s developers. Cool stuff. Granted, there’s myriad other examples online of others trying to do the same thing. But Friendly’s site had, to me, a great range of what’s out there. Too bad many of the examples cited are in printed books and hard to access. But digging through the examples is worth it. Imagine, for example, Napoleon’s march through a 3D cube which visualizes time and distance through various layers. Or as a trippy, post-apocalypic romp through physical space? My favorite is this Flash re-creation of the whole shebang, from the perspective of… everything. This is what people mean when they say “bells and whistles.” I chuckle to think what the very intense Edward Tufte’s assessment would be. Props to Menno-Jan Kraak for a terrific website cataloging all of these examples.

And, if you are really, really, really into the Minard graphic, go here for more, ranging from atlases to games.

Oh, and there’s even a piechart. But I’ll let you find that one yourself. Here’s the fancy original image from Wikipedia.

If a pie chart makes you squint…

April 20, 2012By carlainformation

Came across an interesting post by Andy Kriebel on pie charts. He essentially deconstructs the decision-making process around how to choose the right format for showing change in a few variables over time. Sound simple? Yes, then no. What starts out as a simple exercise…

Andy Kriebel's pie chart exercise — pie chart showing three data points for one year; same format for another year... see how the data changes

…turns into a practical, instructive seven-step journey through different formats. As designers, we’ve all been through this process of trial-and-error, pros and cons. But it’s very helpful to see the breakdown of what you gain or lose by each format.

If a pie chart makes you squint, look away.

It’s pretty clear (at least to me) that the consensus is this: pie charts are good for one thing, and one thing only: showing the relationship of the parts to the whole. They are not good for showing a gazillion slices of data–they are good for showing two. Or three. They are not good if they make you squint. And they are useless for an apples-to-apples approach.

And donut charts? Forget about it. The white circle in the middle makes it impossible to see where the angles meet, undermining a user’s attempt to size up slices and make comparisons. EagerEyes cites research showing the readers focus on the center, where the angles are formed and the lines meet.

As EagerEyes points out, human beings are terrible at gauging anything other than 90 and 180 degree angles–we can discern halves and quarters but beyond that, not so much. That’s where bar charts and other formats come in. Stephen Few tells us to save pies for dessert.

My takeaway is: be very clear about what you are trying to show, and only use pie charts when:

it is important that you show the relationship of one thing to another that a pie chart intuitively portrays–how the parts relate to the whole (e.g., when a piece shrinks the other pieces grow)
AND (not if) you have a few points to share, not itty bitty slices that require squinting
you remember that pie charts do not do a good job of visually comparing and contrasting specific values to one another over time (an apples-to-apples approach

(Pssst… I’m still going to make donut charts now and then. They’re pretty.)

Clustering via tree mapping: fantastic data visualization

April 19, 2012By carlainformation, interactives

How do you empirically score the importance of a gazillion science journals, and show the results in 10 seconds?

Here is a fantastic example of clustering via tree mapping (using Flare), produced by Eigenfactor.org and Moritz Stefaner, a noted data visualization designer. The interactive shows how different scientific journals are scored according to a value called an Eigenfactor score–the relative importance of a journal in its field. The score essentially counts the number of citations tracking back to a particular journal and–more importantly–the significance of those citations. The tree map is interactive and the interface intuitive–clicking on a particular cluster shows the path of incoming and outgoing citations (and their relative importance). Wow. I’m in love.

The tree mapping interactive is one of four very cool data visualizations (built using Flare) that Eignenfactor.org has developed–all of which attempt to show information flow in science. Citation patterns, change over time and information mapping are the others. I’ll write about these in later posts, but suffice it to say that you can spend hours on these.

Zombies, HTML5 and Google Maps

April 18, 2012By carlainteractives

Hmmm. File under… data visualization? Tag as zombies, survival, humor?

The Map of the Dead – Zombie Survival Map was built with HTML5’s geolocation functionality, the Google Places API, and Google Maps’ stylized maps feature. Designed by Doejo, It’s simple and, though it could have used a more robust feature-set (those little place icons could tell a good story), it nonetheless has a clean, simple interface and three toggling map views (map, danger zone and no danger zone).

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