The Age of Data

Standford University has an amazing track-record in the initiation and development of projects that deal with data visualization. Geoff McGhee, an online journalist specializing in multimedia and info-graphics produced a compelling documentary on current research and practices in the art of visualization and its place in the age of data.

An annual awards and opportunity for cross-pollination is the Society of News Design Malofiej 19 Summit. Participants have observed that the rise in technologies allowing us to create visualization has led to an increase in stunning but otherwise vacuous graphics. The beauty factor remains compelling however as the annual Feltron Report demonstrates.

“We’re just in a phase where we haven’t quite figured out how to put this out to average reader. (. . .) It’s become like a cult trend. Some of the people doing it are like rock star”—John Grimwade of Condé Nast, observes.

This same technological development however is providing greater opportunity for interactivity and use of live data so results can in fact reflect trends in meaningful ways. Many Eyes, an IBM initiative, offers examples of visualizations but also tools to create your own. Its creators believe that—not unlike typography which is now accessible to anyone with a computer—data visualization will improve greatly the more people experiment with it.

“This idea of enabling discovery, look at the data and discover things in it that you wouldn’t have necessary have thought to look for is an important part of what we’re thinking about.”— Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen Design

With successful visualization comes unexpected questions, explorations into reasons and as a result a requirement for complete data and unlimited access. Stamen Design cites an eloquent example where, asked by the City of San Francisco to produce a crime stats visualization, the designers discovered that numbers they were provided were lacking those relating to prostitution, alcohol-related crimes and homicides.

“Visualization can promote openness by the fact of it existing. (…) [it] can serve two roles: one is the explicit role of letting us see stuff coming, the other is this sort of funny passive-aggressive role that you find yourself pushed into a mode of wanting to make data open.”—Martin Wattenberg, IBM Research

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All images from Journalism in the Age of Data