Practical Examples

"Web Trend Map 4," Informationarchitects.net

Web Trend Map 4 plots the Internet’s leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map. Hard Copies available and displayed in galleries.

"Etsy Geolocator," Marumushi.com

Esty Geolocator is an interactive 3D world globe illustrating the location of Etsy sellers. Users can search the globe for products by tags, materials, seller names or location.

"NewsMap," Marumushi.com

NewsMap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.

"Social Circles," Marumushi.com

Social Circles intends to partially reveal the social networks that emerge in mailing lists. The idea was to visualize in near real-time the social hierarchies and the main subjects they address.

"Synapsis," Marumushi.com

Synapsis is an application that partially visualizes network traffic. The Synapsis client visualizes the actual packets flowing on the network and partially reveals the network topology.

"The True Cost of Skipping Class," Studentscholarshipsearch.com

Students skip class. It's a fact of life. It may be because of laziness or necessity but few think they are missing more then just a two-hour lecture. This graphic uses information from sources such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, MSNBC, and CBS to show how much money the average students loses by missing class. This kind of information is very much enhanced by visualization as the true scale of the information being presented can be seen.

"What's up with the World?" series, Visual Loop

This series is an exclusive collaboration between Visual Loop, a data visualization blog, and Killer Infographics, a producer of most of the active viral infographics on the web. The series is an infographic that is created each month using the most notable headlines and statistical data of the month from news resources such as Washington Post, USA Today, Business Week, New York Times, National Post, and World Politics Review. The headlines are presented beside the visualized statistical data and a caption to describe the information. This collaboration between a blog and an infographic production company is an example of a useful service that comes from the competitive trying to stand out in a saturated market of visual blogs.

"Social Media Languages," Language Connect

The image shows the top four social networks listed by size of their user base. The world maps for each social networks shows the languages they support by country of their use. Also shows the top five countries by number of users for each site to show the diversity of their demographics. Language Connect gathered data from the top social networking sites to create this infographic.

"UK vs US spelling: Separated by a Common Language," Datagraphie.com

British and American spelling has always been a topic of conversation and debate especially in Canada where we are exposed to both versions so much. British spelling differences and pronunciations are easy to see for ESL students and anyone who interacts with English speakers across the ocean. This infographic provides several examples of common British spelling differences and their US counterparts. This is one of the most effective uses of inforgraphics to show the most common differences. To see the information presented in such a clear and visually appealing manner allows the reader to easily understand the otherwise dull and somewhat complex information.

"Turning Travel Itineraries into Jewelry," Infosthetics.com

This is something truly unique. If you planned a trip that you would like a data visualization keepsake from then plot your trip on a map or access your actual trip data from FourSquare and submit it to an online shop Meshu The mapped locations form a unique, flat polygon mesh, which then can be digitally fabricated and worn as a piece of physical data art jewelry.

"Energy Technology Perspectives (Revealing the Impact of Energy Technology on Global CO₂ Emissions)," IEA

This is a three-part interactive visualization that relies on the data and figures behind the Energy Technology Perspectives 2012 the IEA's (International Energy Agency) flagship publication of the data of energy technologies. This interactive infographic shows how the overall International energy system will evolve from now to 2050. The graph also allows users to view the information by country and apply three different global temperature scenarios.

The Emissions Reduction visualisation allows you to quickly and easily see what impact countries, technologies, and sectors may have on carbon dioxide emissions in the decades to come. The Energy Flows visualisation focuses on the transport, industry and buildings sectors, highlighting the different fuels (from oil to biofuels), sectors (from petrochemicals to residential) and end uses (from water heating to lighting) that will be affected in the years ahead. The transport visualisation lets you compare selected indicators—from annual roadway travel to roadway length—across countries and regions.

"Network Medicine: Using Visualization to Decode Complex Diseases," TED Talk

Albert-László Barabási says diseases are the results of system breakdowns within the body, and mapping intracellular protein networks will help us discover cures. Using a metaphor of Manhattan maps, he explains how an all-encompassing map of the relationships between genes, proteins, and metabolites can form the key to truly understand the mechanisms behind many diseases. He further makes the point that diseases should not be divided up in organ-based separate branches of medicine, but rather as a tightly interconnected network. This unique work tells us that a doctor needs to become a "networkologist" able to understand where diseases are laying in the network of the human body and how they relate to each other.

Visualization located here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU_7FHAKMgA&feature=player_embedded

"Ask a Librarian," Scholarsportal

"Ask a Librarian" is a virtual reference service that connects students, faculty, and researchers from participating Ontario university libraries with real-time research assistance through chat. This collaborative initiative is managed by Scholars Portal, a service of the Ontario Council of University Libraries. This is a visualization of their data collected between Fall and Winter 2011–2012 It includes data on patterns of service use, question types, and user demographics in an attempt to highlight implications for library service planning, staffing, and delivery. This infographic presents a complete project. It states a research question "What are students asking? Are they getting the answers they need?" It then shows the data used to answer the question and cites the sources used to collect this data. Finally the graphic shows the implications of the data collected and answers the research questions. "87% of users said that they received 'just the right amount of assistance' from Ask a Librarian operators. This suggests that library staff are correctly assessing and meeting users' information needs and service expectation most of the time." Also "Students are using chat services for more than quick questions: over half of chats initiated were research-related."

America Revealed, PBS

The show includes some amazing visual imagery that aim to communicate various GPS location-based patterns, ranging from New York's multi-layered morning rush-hour commute (including ferries, rail, and bus services) to trails of flights carrying at least one passenger in the cargo hold (i.e., dead bodies). Other statistics shown include the number of job losses, the location of communication towers or the truck movements supplying Domino's Pizza network, and so on.

This is taking data visualization out of the library, the laboratory, and the internet to the mainstream in the form of entertainment, a television show. Full episodes can be streamed (in the US at least) from the PBS website.

"Toronto Net Tuesday: Data Visualization - Sharing Your Story through Data," Technsoup

This was an event that was held for nonprofits and charities that collect data and need to communicate it in a meaningful way to stakeholders and anyone who want to learn about tools and methods for data visualization. The event featured two speakers: Gabe Sawhney, Innovation strategist, creative technologist and researcher at the Centre for Innovation in Information Visualization and Data-Driven Design (CIV-DDD); and, Justin Malecki, Renewable energy researcher and analyst for ClearSky Advisors, specializing in photvoltaic markets.

The events main theme was that in order to communicate data effectively you need more then just a large amount of data, you also need to be able to tell a story or answer a question. Do not get hung up on the tools or the visuals, think about the reason you are telling your story, who the audience is, and the key message you want to get across.

"Maps of US Census Blocks, 2010," Datapointed.net

The artist Stephen Von Worley used the US Census city block geometrics as the lines of the framework. Then each Census block is coloured to contrast with its neighbours and contribute harmoniously to the overall texture, not to communicate any information but to present something visually beautiful. An image whose shape was created by statistical information but whose purpose was to create something beautiful rather then communicate information.

"The Social Media World – How to Navigate the New Internet Economy Network of Data Visualization References," Socialnomics

Developer Santiago Ortiz explores visualization references through Delicious tags and puts them in a discovery context. There are two views. The first is a network with tags and resources as nodes. At first it looks like a giant hairball, but mouseover and you get a fisheye effect to zoom in on nodes, which makes them more readable. Mouse over a tag, and the labels for related resources get bigger, and likewise, mouse over a resource, and the related tags get bigger. This is an example where a very interesting application does not serve its purpose well. It is difficult to read and navigate. The second view lets you compare resources. In the network, select two ore more resources, and then click on the bottom button to compare the selected.

The Quiet Project

This is a very unique example as this digital essay is one that does not display information in a new an exciting way, allowing easily share the large amount of information you just received to your to your entire social network. In fact, "The Quiet Project" does just the opposite of that. In a world filled with constant information and scholars and designers striving to find new ways to gather and display more information "The Quiet Space" is a interactive website which guides the user through a thought experiment using black letters on a grey background and some music to create a quiet place away from the constant information of today’s world provided by Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and alike forcing us to be quiet for 30 seconds and remember that computers have not always been a part of our life.

Sexperience UK

The data from the 1000 individuals has been derived from the 7,500 participants of the "Great British Sex Survey" conducted by Ipsos MORI for Channel 4 in 2011. The sample is statistically representative of the UK population as a whole. Some of the survey questions have been adapted/combined for the purposes of The Sexperience 1000.