Data Viz for outside.in presented at Where2.0 in San Jose

Recently, I created a visualization for Outside.In. It was presented at the Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose by author and Outside.In co-founder, Steven Johnson. The interface visualizes location-specific blog and mainstream media activity during a six-month period, from December 2006 to May 2007. The region of the map covers a section of Brooklyn that includes Ft. Greene, Boerum Hill and the northern tip of Park Slope.

Information Recast: A Flexible Map

Information Recasting is an ongoing information visualization project. One of the primary aspects of the work is the design of interfaces that give users control over the visual presentation of data. The other major objective is creating information visualizations that convey compelling narratives and ideas that would otherwise be silent, hidden away in a data set too voluminous and multifaceted to consider in a single space in a single moment.

Information Recast: A Flexible Map, a visualization interface to the 2004 United Nations data about global migration, is the most recent work in this series. On the interface control panel are a variety of features that allow users to control aspects of how the data is displayed visually. The result of this flexibility is that users become more familiar with individual aspects of the data set. In testing, users would frequently make discoveries like "I didn't know so many people migrated to Russia." A compelling data narrative, an expression of an idea about the data that is greater than the sum of its parts, begins to emerge when the user selects the "GDP per capita" arrangement on the control panel. In that configuration the map is organized with longitude on the horizontal axis and GDP per capita along the vertical axis on the screen. Watch video of the Information Recasting presentation during thesis week at ITP!

Information Recast: A Flexible Map in the blogosphere: Paul Kedrosky and Laura Athavale Fitton.

Information Recast: A Flexible Matrix

This tool is the first piece from the Information Recasting project. Based on CIA World Factbook data, this interface gives users a unique way to access a wide variety of statistics and other points of information about the region.