Research and Analysis

The data set was provided by The Meteoritical Society, an organization that has been documenting meteorites since 1933. The data set we received contained the name of each meteorite, the weight, the year when it fell or was found as well as its coordinates. I noticed early that the amount of registered meteorites was very few before 1974. The reason for the increase was that during this time scientists started to discover meteorites in the deserts of the Earth which eventually led to more meteorites being registered.

In order to get some more knowledge on the subject, I decided to set up a meeting with a professor from the Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology in Zürich. The discussion was very helpful and I definitely got a better understanding of the topic matter. Since the data presented the types of meteorites, one initial thought was to show the origin of them, but unfortunately the documentation of where in space the meteorites originate from is not documented well enough to cover the large part of the approximately 34 000 meteorites that were included in the MS’s data set.

Concept

One of the focus points that could give an interesting take on the data is to bring forward the variation of materials of which the meteorites consist. Initial data analysis made it clear that the distribution between the types is quite striking. One of the things that caught my attention when looking at the data was how much of the meteorite types were Chondrites and how few Martian rocks there were. Since the material of the meteorite gives us some hints about its origin, I thought this was a very interesting approach to use when telling a story about this topic. After some research I found that the types can be categorized into ‘stony meteorite’, ‘stony iron meteorite’, ‘iron meteorites’ and in this case also ‘other’ which would include unknown and smaller groups of meteorites. The overall dimensions that I wanted to include in the visualization is the types, the location and the size of the meteorites, which eventually was chosen to be shown in the first part of the visualization on the globe. Different colors were used to clearly indicate the four categories of meteorites and their location shown on a map. The second part would use the same categories but put them in a time perspective and point out the yearly amount of meteorites and what category they belong to.

During the sketching phase I wanted to find out how to enhance the chosen set of data and to visually adapt it to the style of the topic itself. As I mentioned earlier the documentation of meteorites didn’t really start until 1974, which means that the chart has very big differences from year to year. This restricted the choice of visualization to some extent because the material amounts vary a lot and some would be barely visible, depending on the style of visualization of course. With the time-frame in mind and since I am still unexperienced when it comes to working with D3.js I decided to go for a static A1-sized poster that would show both of the visualizations. This allowed me to focus more on choosing the right kind of content and figuring out how it could engage the viewer with all the information shown. I started off by figuring out how to show the locations, size of the meteors and their type as one visualization. This would eventually be projected onto a globe showing all the continents and the meteorites as different sized dots and colors. To do this an ‘azimuthal’ equal area projection was used in D3.js that would show all the meteorites and continents at once.

Result

The final result is a poster that shows the locations of all the registered impacts on a globe and the material of these meteorites. On the upper visualization I wanted to highlight some of the meteorites because of the story behind them or how its landing has affected Earth. Some of the meteorites I pointed out were the Cape York Meteorite, which is the heaviest meteorite moved by human force. Another important crater that I wanted to show is the Chicxculub crater that is believed to be formed by the meteorite that eventually led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The color categories are also used on the second visualization to show the separate amount of a specific material for each year between 1974-2012. The material amounts are separated in different layers to show them in comparison to each other and to make each category more visible. A large scale version of the final poster can be viewed at visualizing.org.

Challenges

Some of the challenges that I encountered was to choose what parts of the data to use and enhance in order to create an interesting twist to it. In the beginning of the process I wanted to try to combine the original data by the MS with external data but this turned out to be challenging because of the extensiveness of the original set. I also think that by exploring the different ways to tell a story with the original data contributed a lot to my learning and understanding of its diversity. Choosing the colors for the meteorite types, turned out to be harder than expected. Since there are so many meteorites on the map, the colors have to be recognizable and easy to distinguish. To achieve a clear contrast with the colors, I explored with light and dark maps as a background for the dots to see which one is the clearest. After trying out several colors, textures and levels of brightness, I found the version with the darkest map to be the best background for the colorful dots. When displaying the information on the poster the balance of the content was crucial. Showing a large amount of information on one poster puts a lot of focus on the layout and trying to visually avoid “over informing” the reader. Although a lot of information is displayed at once, it is important to achieve an engaging experience for the viewer and to keep them interested. That’s why it is crucial to set up the content so that it allows different layers of information depending on how much information the reader wishes to receive. This means that the information should be easily understood at a quick glance, but still allow room for more in-depth examination.

Conclusion

Taking part in this kind of challenge was a very interesting experience for me, especially since I haven’t worked with data visualization prior to my internship at Interactive Things. By participating in this challenge I got a very good insight of how it is to work with data, making it engaging and easily comprehensible for the viewer. The balance between creating a visually appealing and captivating result and conveying it without compromising the accuracy of the data is something that fascinates me with data visualization and I hope to be able to work with similar challenges again soon!

For this year’s SEE#8 Conference we headed off to Wiesbaden’s Schlachthof where the annual event would take place. The conference with its approximately 900 participants had a lineup of 8 speakers worth getting excited about.

The Speakers

The conference was opened by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich who shared an insightful analysis of consumer behavior and media philosophy.

The second speaker up was Pablo Vio, Creative Director at Jam3, a visualization agency based in Toronto. His team is the one behind the interactive documentary Bear71 which serves as a good example of powerful visual storytelling. His talk centered around their design and development process and how building their own tools helps them to advance the creative range of their projects.

“Step out of photoshop: visualize data with Code.”- Pablo Vio

Klaus Obermaier is an Austrian choreographer with a strong interest in interactive projections and how it can be used in dance performances. It was interesting to see how simple projections can transform the overall experience and performance.

One of the topics discussing the future of consumer products was Jeroen Junte, a Dutch design critic and author. In his presentation he showed the audience how the 3D-printing wave will eventually result in a new industrial revolution. I really enjoyed the example with the Solar powered 3D-printer.

“We are looking into a bright future, so bright we need to wear shades.” – Jeroen Junte

Dries Verbruggen is a Flemisch designer and co-founder of the design studio Unfold. Like the previous speaker, his talk was about 3D printing, where he shared his vision of production on-the-go becoming accessible for everyday consumers. This vision was shown as a project called Kiosk 2.0 where a mobile 3D printing services would allow anyone to quickly produce customized items for daily use. Very interesting and provocative approach to a very fascinating topic.

“Design has to be meaningful to make it personal”- Dries Verbruggen

Creating amazing everyday experiences using digital installations is something that was strongly conveyed in Daan Roosegaard’s presentation. What was especially interesting was his way of inviting new materials and technologies when creating smart and aesthetic installations in urban areas. His way of collaborating as an open minded designer together with municipal decision makers was very inspiring and proves that with a strong vision and the necessary influence, anything seems possible.

Antony Turner is the CEO and founder of Carbon Visuals, an agency focused on visualizing carbon emissions in natural habitats. The challenge of spreading emission awareness, or what Turner calls “carbon literacy” is in many cases the lack of concrete consequences to point at when explaining the effect of carbon emissions.

An interesting collection of work were presented by Catalog Tree when describing projects they have been involved in during the last years. It was nice to hear about the variety of work they have been working on, one of them being their interactive documentary about algorithmic trading and accelerated stock markets called “Money&Speed”.

The Dinner

To extend the discussion and to reflect on the conference, the team at Interactive Things organized a dinner on Saturday at the Spital in the center of Wiesbaden. Around 50 guests, including speakers, organizers, and visualization enthusiasts joined in. Besides the great food, the tables were filled with interesting discussions that eventually continued until the late hours at Kulturpalast.

The Workshop

As the tradition goes, the SEE+ Workshop was organized the next morning in the studio of Scholz & Volkmer, where speakers and conference audience get together to discuss the topics that got stuck in our minds from the day before. As in previous years, the moderators were Moritz Stefaner, Andrew Vande Moere, and Benjamin Wiederkehr. Speakers participating this year were Antony Turner from Carbon Visuals, Nina Bender and Joris Maltha from Catalogtree, Pablo Vio from Jam 3 and Klaus Obermaier. The questions discussed centered around the intent behind the creatives’ work and the potential impact they believe to have on society. With a very informal agenda, this was a great opportunity to meet and chat with like-minded people and to learn a thing or two from the pros.

Conclusion

One of the core topics for this year was the use of tools. A lot of designers nowadays write their own software to create design solutions that go way beyond Photoshop or Illustrator. One particularly great analogy came from Dries about the Japanese sword smiths, who are required to master the skill of building the tools used for sword making first, before they actually can use them to make swords.

The selection of this years presenters yielded a very broad range of topics and felt only loosely related to information visualization. Considering that see claims to be «the conference on visualization of information», it was surprising to see how little the topic was brought up and discussed among the speakers. Don’t get us wrong, we highly enjoyed the inspirational breadth of visual work presented, just the focus felt not as strong as in previous years.

Lastly, we’d like to mention something that has been brought up before here and elsewhere, which is the lack of female speakers. We as a community need to work harder to achieve an equal balance between male and female speakers. Because, when looking at the field of practitioners, the gender proportion seem actually very well balanced.

Overall, the organizers did an excellent job of creating a space where so many professionals and starting-out practitioners have the possibility to share thoughts and get inspired from one another. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly and the event well organized. Looking forward to what next year’s conference will offer!

This article was co-written by Martina Frantzén and Benjamin Wiederkehr.

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The Starting Point

During the first two weeks of March 2013, Interactive Things and the Swiss newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” (NZZ) collaborated on a web publication about the Fukushima nuclear disaster that took place in Japan in 2011. The reporter Marcel Gyr and photographer Christoph Bangert revisited the same people they met two years earlier and interviewed them again to hear their personal accounts on how their lives have changed during that time.

Our task was to create an online reading experience to present the long form text, the photos and the video footage in a sincere but pleasant way. To support the readers in their understanding of the text, we created several visualizations to clarify and point out important facts. However, because the focus of this publication was very much on the people, we had to be careful not to bring too much of our own interpretation of the events into the text. This is where the experience of Sylke Gruhnwald, the NZZ data journalist who initiated the project and collaborated with us very closely throughout, was of great help; she always found the data we asked for and provided guidance in finding the right story and telling it subtly.

Because we wanted the visual and interactive design to reflect the contents of the story, we waited until the reporter returned from Japan before starting any work. After his return, we kicked-off the project by having him tell us everything about his journey and mapped out all the topics he mentioned. It soon became apparent that the four people he interviewed played such an important role that the story should be told around them. With this rough outline and the knowledge about possible contents, we started to work on the storytelling framework and data gathering, while the reporter started to write the text.

The Process

Most of us in the design team didn’t have any prior experience in working on journalistic projects like this which gave a very interesting twist to the work process. Since the content (written by Marcel Gyr) was something that was created in parallel to the design process, our task was to develop the right kind of framework for it. Because of this parallel development it was very important that we were able to work directly at the NZZ offices to easily get questions answered, decide on contents and keep everyone on the team up-to-date with where the text and thus the project was going. By the time we received the final version of the story we were able to pick and choose from our prepared assets and layout the story with the matching contents.

Since the article would include media such as video, photos and visualizations, we wanted to use them in a way that explained certain subtopics of the stories without creating a distraction for the reader. The placement of them was in many ways crucial both for keeping the amount of material similar through all the chapters, as well as creating a balance between visual elements and the text. When we considered the layout of the page, we also wanted to keep the focus on the people in the story and portray them in an honest manner.

Data journalist Sylke Gruhnwald acted as a link between us and the NZZ team during their visit to Japan. During the trip she updated us on the progress and what kind of material had been acquired. Sylke worked closely with us during the whole project where she collected and organized interesting data and material that would be useful for the project. She also translated the interviews together with the japanese translator Sena Hangartner.

The photos that were brought back from the trip were printed out, which enabled us to use them when structuring the content and its correct order. We put all the images up on a wall where we could easily change the order and maintain a good overview of the project. Since we knew the chapters were going to be based on the different families and people, we were able to start thinking about how and when they would be shown within each chapter. This way we could easily mark the images that would be used as cover pictures, included in slideshows and which ones to remove altogether.

After planning the content and collecting the data, it was time to bring the many ideas to life by developing the website for desktop browsers, tablets and smart phones. After the greater layout and position of the content was defined, the more detailed components, such as the maps and the visualizations, were created and placed accordingly. After sketching out the layout we moved on to think about the transitions and actions of the content and how to mark the beginning and end of the chapters. The initial ideas were prototyped in Apple Keynote to see how the transitions between the chapters would work together with the text, the pictures and the videos. We wanted to test how content could be displayed during reading and how the the chapters could be divided in order to maintain a good flow in the story.

The Result

An additional thing that we also needed to consider was that not everyone reads an article from start to finish. The reader might want to have the choice of switching chapters during reading and know more about a specific area or person. For this we created a navigation menu at the top of the page which can be accessed at any point. This menu allows the reader to jump to sections based on a specific geographic area or to a certain family or individual in the story. When choosing an area from the list, it is marked on the map on the left side of the drop-down menu in order to give the reader a better idea about the placement in relation to other cities.

The visualizations for the different parts of the text served the purpose of giving more depth to the topics. For example in the chapter about radiation, the measuring units micro- and millisievert are mentioned. Here we wanted to explain what these units measure without going into too much technical detail. The aim with this specific visualization was to show the amount of radiation that is mentioned in the text and compare it to places and situations that we are exposed to during our everyday lives. We used Processing to render small Gif animations where each of the squares represent the radiation amount in the shape of small moving particles, because that’s what Sievert actually measures. The more dense the particles are, the more radiation it symbolizes. By using this visualization technique, the readers can start to “feel” what these abstract values mean. Even more so with the concluding image, which shows the radiation measured directly in the Fukushima reactor: 400 millisievert per hour compared to all the other values which are measured per hours; it’s almost completely black. The colored row of squares shows the radiation according to the radiation map we used in an earlier chapter. Here the colors are the same as on the map, with the darkest red being the area with the highest radiation and the lightest representing the area with the least radiation. This was done to connect the visualization with elements that the reader has already seen and can easily recognize.

0.01 mSv: X-Ray of a tooth0.055 mSv: Single flight from Europe to USA1 mSv: Annual dose limit in Switzerland1.4 mSv: Smoking one box of cigarettes without filter2.3 mSv: Working one year as a flight attendant5.5 mSv: Radiation exposure in Switzerland20 mSv: Threshold for radiation-exposed personnel100 mSv: Threshold dose4.4 mSv: Zone with 0.5 µSv/h35 mSv: Zone with 4 µSv/h140 mSv: Zone with 16 µSv/h400 mSv: Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 14th 2011 (per hour)

To show the extent of the evacuation we wanted to show the concrete evacuation zones mandated by the government and how far the people were evacuated from their homes. Because, as it turned out, some people that had to leave their homes live “only” fifteen or twenty kilometers from their former home but can never go back. For this purpose we created two different visualizations: a map that shows the evacuated areas and a visualization of the exact distances. The map was chosen because of the geographic accuracy of the different zones and their classification. The classifications were: “Area to which people may return but not stay overnight”, “Restricted area”, “Difficult area”, “Fully evacuated area” and “Planned evacuation area”. The zones are classified depending on how much radiation still exists in the area at that time. The yearly changes of the zone restrictions were shown as separate maps where the reader can see the changes in the borders clearly. The colors that were explored were based on the existing color profile of NZZ but moved later on to simplistic colors such as different shades of red. This was done to maintain a similar style of the visualizations throughout the piece.

To explain the distribution of how far people were evacuated from their homes and to which cities they moved, we used a very simple visualization. Since we were mostly interested in showing how far people have been evacuated from their starting destination we didn’t need to show it as a map but instead we used lines to represent the distances and destinations. The vertical line in the middle shows the distribution of evacuees from the north to the south of Japan. The red color represents the situation in 2011 and the blue part of the lines show the development of the evacuation during 2012. From the visualization it turns out that most of the people were evacuated to areas very close to their home and not to cities further away. By showing the information in this way, the main information about distance is clear and the areas where most people were evacuated to is very easy to spot.

To inform about which areas are currently contaminated, we traced an official map. The intensity of the radiation was shown again with different red shades, where the darkest red represents the zone with the most radiation etc. The same colors are used deliberately to link to the colors used in the evacuation maps and the Sievert visualization. By placing a silhouette of Switzerland next to the radiation map, the (mostly Swiss) readers can get a better understanding of the size of the area in question.

For the evacuation and radiation maps we used a slideshow, for the visualization explaining micro- and millisievert, we used a grid of small animated Gifs that were rendered from Processing.

These simplifications allowed us to use our development resources on getting everything working instead of debugging even more code. The implementation of all design details was done at the very end from Fireworks mockups and with the final content.

The final result is an interactive web online publication that is developed with a large focus on the reading experience and enhancing aspects of storytelling by using interactive features. The publication has a responsive UI which enables the reader to read the content on various devices such as a smartphones, desktop browsers and tablets. The look and feel of the publication should convey a certain calmness and let the reader take his/her time when viewing it.

We wish to thank Sylke Gruhnwald and Marcel Gyr from NZZ for an interesting and memorable collaboration. Have a look at the live version of the article at fukushima.nzz.ch and let us know your thoughts.

We’ve compiled a small list of conferences definitely worth visiting in 2013. Events like this are a great way to see, learn, connect and be inspired. If you’re lucky enough to get a ticket, be sure to let us know so we could meet up and have a chat.

Lift Conference 2013

6-8 February 2013 CICG, Geneva, Switzerland
http://liftconference.com/lift13

Lift is one of Europe’s leading technology and innovation events exploring the business- and social implications of digital technologies. Its unique format allows for a rich experience where participants mingle in a dynamic and informal environment. Together they share, connect and create new opportunities. Lift is about discovering new trends and turning them into opportunities. It is a memorable three-day event packed with inspirational talks, interactive workshops and fun networking activities.

Strata Conference

26-28 February 2013 Santa Clara, California, USA
http://strataconf.com/

Strata Conference is a series of recurring events hosted by O’Reilly. The next conference, held in Santa Clara, California will be all about data and how to make it work for your business. It will cover the latest and best tools and technologies for this new discipline, along the entire data supply chain—from gathering, cleaning, analyzing, and storing data to communicating data intelligence effectively. With sessions on a diverse range of topics and provocative reports from experts and innovators, Strata Conference showcases the people, the tools, and the technologies that make data work. Later this year, 11–13 November 2013, another Strata event will be held in London.

Tapestry

27 February 2013 Nashville, Tennessee, USA
http://www.tapestryconference.com/

Tapestry is a new conference designed to advance interactive online storytelling with data. While it focuses on visual ways of telling stories in journalism, there will be a broad range of topics, and a line-up of amazing speakers. The attendees come from the fields of design, academia and journalism. This one-day, invitation-only conference will include keynotes, discussion and a demo theater designed to provoke ideas and discussion across disciplines. Tapestry will bring these different viewpoints together with the goal of sharing perspectives and generating new ideas.

IC13 – Infographics 2013

1 March 2013 Zeist, The Netherlands
http://infographics.eu

Since infographics are no longer restricted to the bounding box of an article or website, the theme of this year’s conference is about “The Infographic Experience”, where the full range of information design will be presented: from paper to tablet, from book to blockbuster and from virtual to reality.

Malofiej 21

13-15 March 2013 School of Communication at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
http://www.malofiej21.com

The Infographics World Summit, is back again with a impressive lineup of outstanding speakers and an agenda featuring some of the best graphics artists who will convey their ideas about how to tell stories through infographics and communicate them to an ever-expanding global audience.

Resonate 2013

21-23 March 2013 Cultural Center Dom Omladine, Belgrade, Serbia
http://resonate.io/2013

Held each year in Belgrade-Serbia, the Resonate festival gives a great overview of the current situation in the fields of music, visual arts and digital culture. Guest artists, lecturers and other participants are chosen to represent the cutting edge of the contemporary creative industry living and working in Europe. The festival provides a platform for networking and education, as well as information and knowledge sharing, together with a distinguished crowd of world class artists with an opportunity of participating in a forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture.

SEE #8

20 April 2013 Schlachthof, Wiesbaden, Germany
http://see-conference.org

For eight years in a row the see conference has been gathering the most creative people and exciting ideas on the topic of information visualization. The interdisciplinary platform brings together fields like design, art, architecture and new technologies. The international speakers will present the latest ideas and approaches on how to deal with the current flood of information, how to visualize it and how to turn it into something that can be experienced and understood.

Eyeo 2013

5-8 June 2013 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA
http://eyeofestival.com

Eyeo assembles an incredible set of creative coders, data designers and artists, and attendees – expect enthralling talks, unique workshops and interactions with open source instigators and super fascinating practitioners, fueled by the people and tools that are transforming the digital culture of today.

OFFF Barcelona 2013

6-8 June 2013 DHUB, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.offf.ws/bcn2013/

OFFF is an entity in continuous transformation, alive and evolutionary. More than a decade ago, it was born as a post-digital culture festival; a meeting place to host contemporary creation through an in depth programme of conferences, workshops and performances by the most relevant artists of our time.

EuroVis 2013

17-21 June 2013 Leipzig, Germany
http://www.eurovis2013.de

EuroVis 2013 is the 15th annual Visualization Symposium organized by the Eurographics Working Group on Data Visualization and the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee.

Expressive 2013 – Computational Aesthetics

19-21 July 2013 Anaheim, California, USA
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/conference/expressive-2013/

The Computational Aesthetics symposium is a part of the Expressive 2013 series of events that bridge the analytic and synthetic by integrating aspects of computer science, philosophy, psychology, and the fine, applied & performing arts. It investigates the creation of tools that can enhance the expressive power of the fine and applied arts and furthers our understanding of aesthetic evaluation, perception and meaning. The conference brings together individuals with the technical experience of developing computer based tools to solve aesthetic problems and people with artistic/design backgrounds who use these new tools. The event is co-located with SIGGRAPH 2013.

SIGGRAPH 2013

21-25 July 2013 Convention Center, Anaheim, California, USA
http://s2013.siggraph.org

Now in its 40th year – SIGGRAPH – the world’s premier conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques comes to California for it’s 2013 edition. The conference attracts the most respected technical and creative people from all over world. Its community includes people everywhere who are excited by research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web. With an exhibition, job fair, courses and presentations this conference is surely not to be missed.

IEEE VIS 2013

13-18 October 2013 Atlanta, Georgia, USA
http://visweek.org

IEEE VIS 2013 is the premier forum for advances in scientific and information visualization. The event-packed week brings together researchers and practitioners from academia, government, and industry to explore their shared interests in tools, techniques, and technology. The week is organized around three separate conferences: Scientific Visualization, Information Visualization, Visual Analytics Science and Technology.

Amendment

Thanks to our astute readers, we are happy to present you with another set of very interesting conferences not to be missed in 2013.

NODE13

11-17 February 2013 Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany
http://node13.vvvv.org/

This years NODE13 conference comes with the key topic “The Rules”. Both, the Symposium and the Exhibition have been curated by Eno Henze and are seeking to investigate Code and Software as a shapeable, cosmoplastic material. With a great selection of speakers and six days fully packed with workshops around vvvv, curated by the vvvv group itself, the NODE13 conference offers something for everyone eager to learn more about new and innovative approaches to the visual arts and digital culture.

CHI 2013

27 April – 2 May 2013 Palais de Congrès de Paris, Paris, France
http://chi2013.acm.org/

The ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is an international conference on human-computer interaction. CHI 2013 is about “changing perspectives”: the conference draws from the constantly changing perspectives of the diverse community, offering new visions of people interacting with technology. It is multidisciplinary, drawing from science, engineering and design, with contributions from research and industry in 15 different venues. CHI also features a community dedicated on the Digital Arts, which bring together researchers, practitioners, and artists whose work is informed by traditional CHI topics such as screen-based interaction, embodied interaction, virtual & augmented environments and data visualization.

OpenVis Conf

16-17 May 2013 Boston, Massachusetts, USA
http://openvisconf.com/

The OpenVis Conf is a great new conference about the practice of visualizing data on the web. Expect two exciting days featuring a great selection of speakers on a single track. The speakers will discuss best practices for data processing, storytelling, visual design, code structure and implementation. They also just announced their first keynote presenter & speaker – for what promises to be a fantastic event: Amanda Cox and Jesse Kriss!

push.conference

25-26 October 2013 Munich, Germany
http://push-conference.com/2013/

push.conference unites creative coding and user experience design, by offering a platform for designers, developers and user experience professionals. The organizers strive to bridge the gap between user experience design and interactive arts, because we firmly believe that both fields can learn a great deal from each other.

This list is still far from complete, so please help us with a note in the comments about any other event that you think would fit this list. What are your plans for 2013? Where will you be present? – As always we are very grateful for all the great input!

The New York Times recently examined the body language of the US presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. For the motion capture and gesture recognition they partnered with experts in movement analysis from the the NYU Movement Lab. The signature gestures of each candidate are shown with an interactive video and accompanying visualization.

After reading about the visualizing.org challenge to create an interactive visualization for the Olympic Summer Games, our current intern Christian Gross accepted the challenge and took it upon himself to create a visualization, applying the new design and development skills he got while staying with us.

His visualization looks back at the 112 year history of the games, which were first held in the city of Athens in 1896. His visualization tries to convey their evolution and to provide an overview of the participating nations, the medals they won and the sports they were most successful in. Here’s how Christian experienced his work on the challenge, what obstacles he had to overcome and what he has learned by doing so.

The Brief

The competition brief was to design a visualization about the Olympic Summer Games. The deadline was set for the 27th of July, which meant that I had merely two weeks left to complete the project, when I started working on the project in the beginning of July. The rest of the briefing was kept rather open providing only an exemplary visualization piece by the New York Times and some suggested data sources to start with.

The Idea

My initial idea was to compare the individual sports visualizing differences in the average age per sport for the competing athletes. Though, after having a first look into the existing data sources I had to give up on the idea because the data on the athletes age was to incomplete to craft it into a meaningful visualization. The idea I settled for was derived from the greek mythology and the history of the Olympic Games.

The origin of the Olympics is shrouded in mystery and legend. One of the most popular myths identifies Heracles and his father Zeus as the progenitors of the Olympic Games. According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games “Olympic” in reference to the mythological Mount Olympus – the home of the gods and the highest mountain in Greece – as a strong symbol incorporating the spirit of the games.

The story of Mount Olympus inspired me to apply the metaphor of a mountain to my approach on how to visualize the accumulation of medals for each nation over time. The concept I then came up with generates unique looking images for each nation by layering all the medals a country has won over time on top of each other while sorting them by sports, thus creating a bar chart resembling a mountain range built out of stacked olympic medals.

The Data

I decided to use sports-reference.com/olympics as the data source for the project, because the site was well structured and also offered some of the data as downloadable CVS files. After some initial tests on the data, I sketched out the complete data structure needed for the visualization consisting of informations about the games, the sports and each individual country. I wrote a handful of python scripts to fetch all the medal-counts and information for each country sorted by year. The result was a collection of 137 separate country data files in the JSON format which I merged together into one big file.

The Design

The next step in the process was to test the dataset and look for emerging patterns. My initial plan was to map each sport to a fixed position inside the graph, so that the user could easily compare rankings in one sport across different nations.

What sounded like a good idea at first was quickly revealed to be visually unsatisfactory, for it resulted in to distracting graphs that looked like there would be data missing, since not every country had won medals in all kinds of sport.

After reconsidering the placing of each sport, I came up with the elegant and simple solution to sort each sport by the medal count and arrange them from the center outwards, thus showing which are the top sports for each country while reinforcing the metaphor of growing mountains.

With the gaps in the graphs closed, the next step was to do a ranking of all the countries. After reading how the official ranking of the IOC works, I implemented the system which weights the countries by their gold, silver and bronze medals count to conclude the ranking list. Using this system I develop the first working prototype of my visualization with the help of the Javascript framework D3.

The prototype also presented me with several new challenges. The first thing I realized was that the total amount of american medals would break the scale boundaries of the visualization. I came up with three different ways to handle the issue: First, I could rescale the boundaries, but that would mean to lose the details in the countries with a small medal count. Second, I could use a logarithmic scale. Or third, I could take advantage of the situation by including the break to add a unique touch to the visualization. I decided to go with the third possibility, letting the bar break through the upper boundary, thereby conveying the remarkable strength of the US in the athletics field in an even more engaging manner.

Furthermore, I tried to keep the design of the visualization as clean and simple as possible in order to keep the communication on a clear and focused manner and support the idea of the metaphorical mountains. Therefore I limited the use of color to labeling of the selected sports and to indicate the newly won medals in the currently selected Olympic game. I also limited the user interaction to allow only the possibility to change the year of the game and to highlight a chosen sport across all countries.

The Conclusion

It was a great project to start, test and improve my skills in D3 and Python. I learned a lot about data gathering and how to work with, transform and verify the data. The timeframe of 2 weeks, working mainly on the side of the normal daily business, was really quite challenging and maybe even a little bit to short. In the end I wish I would have had just a little more time to work on it, maybe even adding some more features like an overview of all the newly won medals for each country and a detail view of each sport, so that the user can understand the IOC ranking a little bit better.

Finally, I have to thank the whole Interactive Things Team for supporting me!

Deroy Peraza from Hyperakt has been working on a follow-up project to the World Cup poster they published in 2010. The Champions Ring is a huge set of sports championships visualizations using radial brackets. The collection features 427 radial brackets (and counting) for the big 5 major leagues in the United States (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS), the Football (read Soccer) Champions League, the Euro and the World Cup. Fine art prints of the posters can be ordered on demand from Curioos.

You just got to love the effort and inspiration Pereza put into this project:

I’ve loved sports since I was a little kid. It wasn’t just that I loved the games, I loved the numbers, the history and the team colors. I spent endless hours memorizing stats and drawing interpretations of team logos. I dreamed of being able to see the history of sports, and each team’s legacy within it, at a glance. I’ve granted my 10-year-old self that wish with The Champions Ring.

Meshu is a way to turn location data into physical objects. Simply map a series of places and the fine folks behind the application turn that into a beautiful piece of custom jewelry. Even easier is to connect directly with Foursquare and Meshu automagically generates pieces featuring places you’ve checked in. The project has been created by Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang, both are based in San Francisco (also, both had worked or still work at Stamen).

We’re interested in how data becomes physical, and making personalized artifacts. We’re also interested in keeping the connection between the object and the information alive — each meshu you make has a unique url. What’s been really great too has been talking to friends who have made their own. People tell us the stories behind their meshus, and will flip or rotate them until they are correct.

So if you’re looking to treat your nerdy significant other, give Meshu a spin. I am pretty pleased with the piece of my Eyeo Festival 2011 checkins in Minneapolis!

When I meet with people and talk about our work, I get asked a lot what technology we use to create interactive and dynamic data visualizations. At Interactive Things, we have a set of preferred libraries, applications and services that we use regularly in our work. We will select the most fitting tool for the job depending on the requirements of the project. Sometimes a really simple tool is all you need to create something meaningful. On other occasions, a more multifaceted repertoire is needed. But how does one choose the right thing to use? An endless list of every tool available, does not answer that question and a recommendation from a friend is oftentimes more valuable.

That’s why we have put together a selection of tools that we use the most and that we enjoy working with. We called it selection.datavisualization.ch. It includes libraries for plotting data on maps, frameworks for creating charts, graphs and diagrams and tools to simplify the handling of data. Even if you’re not into programming, you’ll find applications that can be used without writing one single line of code. We will keep this list as a living repository and add / remove things as technology develops. We hope this will help you find the best tool for your next job.

Let me answer the most likely questions right away: No, not everything find its’ way into this list, so you might not find your personal favorite. Yes, some of the libraries mentioned are brand spanking new and may not be ready for production while others already have successors, but they still provide a good service.