The power of visualization

By Leonora Oppenheim | Published: October 21, 2011

Excellent words from Seth Godin this week on why “data is hard for human beings to digest.” He talks about, “the power of visualizing data and turning it into information.” We like his thinking, but we also know it needs to go further, so that people really can identify with and make use of that visualisation.

We’re turning information into conversation. Our installations in public spaces create opportunities for people to tell their own stories in relation to research and data that is local and relevant to them. As Seth says,

“We repeatedly underestimate how important a story is to help us make sense of the world.”

Read the whole of Seth’s blog here.

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Stefanie Posavec talks about her beautiful handcrafted infographics

By Leonora Oppenheim | Published: October 21, 2011

This is a lovely video from Protein OS interviewing Stefanie Posavec about her work creating infographics. We love her “hand made” approach to dealing with patterns in numbers.  Read the feature on Stefanie here and watch the interview below.

 

“Everything I have done so far has revolved around things that I love – books and language, and maths and numbers. As long as I’m looking at something that I am really interested in it makes the days and hours of sifting through and analysing a subject easier.”

We’re pretty excited about Stefanie’s recent artwork for the cover of the new OK GO album. Apparently explanations of the graphics are pending…

This quote from Stefanie about what she wants to do next sounds right up our street. Creative collaboration with scientists is where it’s at. Great minds think alike.

“I’d love to collaborate more with scientists and researchers. Perhaps an artist-in-residence at a research institute; working with people with lots of interesting data that don’t really know what to do with it. And turning that data into something beautiful to show the public all the wonders that they are missing.”

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The Butterfly Effect Project Inset Day

By Leonora Oppenheim | Published: September 23, 2011

We’ve been working very hard here at Creative Data over the last few months to get our first education project off the ground. We’re very excited to say that last week we launched The Butterfly Effect Schools Project at an INSET Day for 10 teachers from participating schools in Norfolk.

This schools project is the culmination of 2 years work following The Butterfly Effect exhibition at The Forum in Norwich in 2009. We had always planned to follow the design installation with a dissemination project which allowed the community to take ownership of the theme of The Future of The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, but due to some inevitable funding struggles it took longer to launch that we imagined.

But now we’re ready to go! Thanks in no small part to the support from our project sponsors The Broads Authority Sustainable Development Fund and Anglian Water.

Last Monday Lucy Rose, originator of the Butterfly Effect children’s workshop at The Forum, and project director Leonora Oppenheim hosted the INSET day, in conjunction with Anglian Water. We introduced the history of the project and handed over our beautiful bespoke education packs. We were very pleased that Paul Munday could join us to present his PhD work on future land use in The Broads. His was the scientific research which we based the map installation on, so it’s important to keep that connection to the original project alive.

Anglian Water kindly hosted us in a wonderfully grand room at the Heigham Waterworks site in Norwich. The size of the room meant we were able to spread out our map sections of The Broads on the floor for our icebreaker.

We used the map as a tool to get teachers from each school to introduce themselves and where they are from. Each stood on their section of the map that they took away with them at the end of the day with their Box of Goodies. We’re looking forward to bringing all the sections back together after the kids have got their hands on them for the schools exhibition next year, which will show off all the schools’ creative output from this project.

Lucy Rose and project researcher Anna Clayton led the sessions, introducing the workshop activities and getting our teachers to try some of them out. This included working in pairs and groups to discuss the various conflicting factors that are important to the future of The Broads.

Lucy even got them on the floor doing an activity!

Marcia Davies and Ellie Pluck from Anglian Water presented to the group about water use, describing the main problems the company faces in cleaning water, and different simple ways of using water more efficiently.

We worked very hard on our education packs for the teachers and we were delighted with the final look and quality of them. Thanks must go to Elio Studio design assistant Hannah Thompson whose beautiful graphic work is spread through the education pack. She also documented the INSET day with these excellent photographs and a short film – coming soon! That’s Hannah below, holding our lovely education booklet.

The response from the teachers was universally positive and we are starting to give the introductory workshops in schools with children next week. Here are just some of the lovely feedback comments we received at the end of the INSET day:

  • Excited at the prospect of being part of an environmental project with a really meaningful outcome.
  • Sounds like a fantastic way to get children and families discussing these important local/national issues.
  • Very enthusiastic to start ‘project’ I think children will really enjoy the learning.
  • The butterfly effect is the perfect way to stimulate discussion about the future of the Broadland, and ensure it is cared for by the next generation.
  • The project reflects the way we like to work in school and incorporates a real life purpose.
  • Inspiring ideas which I’m sure we’ll have great fun with at school.

Watch this space to follow the project’s progress. We will keeping in touch with each school and posting blogs on their activities throughout the process.

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Infographics made easy with ‘Chartwell Type’

By Hannah Thompson | Published: September 19, 2011

We’re excited to see a recent development by Portland based TK Type, which has made creating infographics simpler for both print and the web. TK Type have developed a downloadable font named “Chartwell Type”, which allows the user to create pie charts, bar graphs and spark lines very easily through  OpenType to interpret and visualise the numbers and values inside web code, making it easy to edit and update.

 

Pie Charts:

 

Chartwell Bars:

 

Chartwell Lines:

 

Each element fetches $20 on the TK Type site, or $50 for all three. It comes with a supporting webfont and a javascript plugin ” to do the heavy lifting” they say, until there is better support.

The system is particularly suited to software programs such as Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop because they have their own text engines, compared to programs such as TextEdit, Omnigraffle and iWork which are not compatible because they work on a MAC based text engine. It also does not agree with Microsoft Office or Excel, so pretty much stick to the Adobe environment if you plan to give it a try.

A fantastic, simple (yet slightly expensive) tool for making infographics more accessible to everyone.

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Comparing Apples To Oranges

By Hannah Thompson | Published: August 1, 2011

After two years of ‘life documenting’ it’s clear Lauren Manning is meticulous about collecting data on her food consumption.

As part of a larger daily data project Lauren noted down every meal she ate for a year. She then used that data set to make over forty different visualisations using a “variety of methods, techniques, styles, degrees of complexity, degrees of additional context and many other elements.”

It’s great to see someone using such a variety of graphic visualisation methods within one project, highlighting the infinite number of creative ways we can choose to tell a data story.

Fast Company‘s post on the project describes this project as “the Nick Felton Effect: Designers can’t get enough of visualizing their own quotidian doings.”

Lauren says, “The feedback I received really showed that there is no one answer to which method and style should be used. Different methods can all have a place when used in an appropriate setting.”

“‘It’s like comparing apples to oranges.’ This phrase is the best way to describe the current state of data visualizations. For the designer, its easy to find good visualizations and bad ones, but how to apply the successful elements of particular designs to one’s own data set starts to get a little more complicated. Data sets vary tremendously, so one man’s brilliant solution can be another’s complete failure. Instead of seeing many excellent visualizations of all different data sets, what if you could see tons of visualizations of the same data set? What new comparisons, knowledge and structure might be developed from this? How can this become a tool for the new data visualizer?”

Fast Company ponder whether this intensive analysis of her daily nutrition has actually had any influence on her eating habits. “You’d assume seeing an entire farm’s worth of poultry on the page might,” they rightly say. But Lauren says the impact of seeing what she eats hasn’t been that great. “My affinity for chicken has become something I’m more conscious of because it was such an outlier in the data, but still I find myself ordering it just as often.”

You can see all 40 visualisations on Lauren Manning’s Flickr Feed.

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The Black Cloud Citizen Scientist League

By Hannah Thompson | Published: July 20, 2011

Thanks to a tip off from @hugh_knowles of Forum For The Future we’ve been looking at the intriguingly named Black Cloud Citizen Scientist League, which examines pollution through collecting a variety of data. We’ve learned from the Citizen Sensing blog that the project is headed by Berkeley Art Studio Professor Greg Niemeyer. He has designed a small box called ‘PuffTron’ that measures CO2, volatile organic compounds, light, noise, heat and damp.

Aimed at measuring pollution and visualising levels of data, the twenty five eyes of the character on the box light up in varying colours to display levels of the elements. As Citizen Sensing explain, “a server collects the data and delivers interesting visualizations to the web site.” Based on a myth of the ‘black cloud‘ Niemeyer and his colleagues believe this tool encourages conversation around pollution and how we are involved.

‘PuffTrons’ were distributed in local communities in the San Francisco area, where local businesses and school children collected some surprising results, including high levels of CO2 in classrooms even before school, which could unknowingly cause sleepiness and headaches.

Below is a short KCET video on the project which very enthusiastically describes the process of how the PuffTron works and its effect on people.

Worth a watch!

We think this project is relevant to the current issue of London Air Quality for the 2012 Olympics, and could be a great way to encourage people to make changes through tracking their own data. Certainly the list of schools close to main roads, recently published by Campaign for Clean Air in London, could find them very useful for measuring pollution levels in their buildings and playgrounds.

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Invisible Dust Project – Double Pendulum

By Hannah Thompson | Published: July 15, 2011

More news on creative air quality projects today. We mentioned the Invisible Dust series yesterday in our post on Helen Storey’s Catalytic Clothing. Here’s a bit more info on what it’s all about.

The project, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Arts Council England, includes a number of public art installations aiming to highlight the effects of air pollution on our health and environment. Artists involved include Faisal Abdu’Allah, HeHe (they of the Nuage Vert) and Dryden Goodwin.

Bringing artists, scientists and sports professionals together this public arts project examines the involuntary process of breathing. It aims to explore how factors such as physical attributes, gender, class and geography affects our breathing and the way we move.

The first artwork on show as part of Invisible Dust is Faisal Abdu’Allah’s work ‘Double Pendulum’ at the View Tube on the Olympic site  29th June – 17th July 2011.

The film can now be seen on the Guardian site.

Double Pendulum takes a critical look at the effect of London’s poor air quality on athletes. If no action is taken to remedy this controversial issue the result may be Britain being fines up to £175m by the International Olympic Committee. But as Double Pendulum highlights it’s not just athletes affected by air pollution, but all of us, especially children.

In relation to this the Campaign for Clean Air in London have recently published a list of schools that are within 150 meters of a road carrying more than 10,000 vehicles per day. Drawing attention to the long term effects of exposure to air pollution, particularly in children, resulting in seriously debilitating conditions such as asthma.

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Catalytic Clothing Improves Air Quality

By Hannah Thompson | Published: July 13, 2011

While working on our London Air Quality project we’re excited to see fashion is also getting involved in finding solutions. In an amazing piece of high tech innovation, Helen Storey and Tony Ryan have brought science and art together to explore how clothing and textiles can be used to purify air as we walk. The idea of ‘Catalytic Clothing’ is to harnesses the power of a photocatalyst, to break down airborne pollutants, acting as a ‘catalytic surface’.

See their beautiful film starring an air purifying clad Erin O’Connor moving balletically to a Radiohead soundtrack:

On the political side of things the debate around Air Quality is growing. Caroline Lucas wrote an article for Guardian yesterday on the severity of the situation. She says the Government is still lacking the urgency needed to investigate solutions rather than begging for more time. The current threat from the air we breathe is not the obvious smog cloud from the 1950′s, but an unseen pollutant.

Our air quality project collaborator Professor Frank Kelly of the Environmental Research group at King’s College London warned: “we have this new problem that we cannot see: it is tiny particles of nitrogen dioxide.” With this invisibility issue comes the lack of public communication on the dangers of high levels of these pollutants present. Designing engaging communications around Air Quality in our urban environments is what we’re working on here at Creative Data.

However, we are now seeing encouraging movement in the public space on this topic. There’s the interesting Invisible Dust art project and last week a Healthy Air Campaign was launched – a coalition including Asthma UK, Campaign for Better Transport and Friends of the Earth. What’s more we’re writing all this today on the day that UK environmental group Climate Rush is staging an air quality protest in London.

This evening Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones will lead a roadblock protest with cyclists hitting London’s streets to stage a ”die-in” at the city’s busiest junctions. The protesters plan to play dead for up to 29 minutes, to symbolise the 29 000 premature deaths attributed to poor air quality in the UK – nearly 5% of all annual UK deaths.

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Chromaroma – London Underground Visualisation Game

By Hannah Thompson | Published: June 24, 2011

We’re excited to have found the Chromaroma project, a game that makes travelling in London engagingly colourful. Released by digital production company Mudlark, it tracks journey data from Oyster cards on the London Underground. Every time people use their oyster cards, data is recorded by TFL.

When you tap in and out at stations your route and journeys are recorded. This data capture allows ‘players’ to take part in the Chromaroma game. Your journeys can be visualised over time, creating a colourful graphic personal record of your daily journeys.

This is the gamification of commuting. As well as graphically mapping your travel there are also challenges on Chromaroma – competing for the fastest journey times between stations, for instance. It also awards points for getting off a stop early and walking, cycling or travelling outside of rush hour, encouraging exercise and smarter commuting.

Chromaroma is somewhat like the Nike Grid project, which tracked individuals running paths, in its use of real world activity mixed with online gaming and data visualisation. We’re inspired by these kind of projects because in our London Air Quality Project we want to create interactive data layers over urban daily commuter patterns to communicate the levels of pollution in the environment.

Nike Grid visualisation of running paths.

The current Chromaroma season fnishes this Sunday, while the team take a break and update the site with new Missions and Collections for the coming season: beginning again on the 4th of July. Exciting stuff, look out for the new challenges!

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Data Design at Goldsmiths BA Design Show 2011

By Hannah Thompson | Published: June 21, 2011

Among my graduating year group was a great breath and variety of work across disciplines. Of the fellow projects from the show here are some innovative examples of representing information in interesting ways.

Rosann Ling – “Ink Stained Verses”:

Rosann Ling‘s project “Ink-stained Verses” used chromotography to express time in an alternative measurement (see film). Inspired by abstract philosophies of time in literature Ling aims to, “break the boundaries of standard units of Time. Merging the barriers separating past, present and future, and allow the mind to wander and take you to another moment in time.”

Over time, the paper absorbs the water and the ink runs – to symbolise the passing of that moment. “It is beautiful, and very symbolic of things being over, destroyed, almost of the death of time. The finished pieces of ink stained paper are works of art in themselves; a momento of a piece of time that can never be reclaimed.” I think this is a fascinating way to visualise time, producing really beautiful results, each different and unique.

Danny Morgan – “Give Data”:

Danny Morgan explored visualising data from the NHS blood stock to communicate the desperate demand for donors. Green representing a ‘good’ supply, fading to orange when supplies were low. Morgan created this visualisation to help “build an understanding that enables the user to attach emotions to the data.

This will raise an awareness to the urgency of blood donations and gives the user the opportunity to discover when their blood is most needed.” I think this is a great way to engage people with the data, linking them personally through blood type and allowing them to identify particular times when their blood group is low.

Chris Ibbit – “Mining for emotion”:

Something a little more unusual, Chris Ibbit programmed balloons to follow news channels through RSS feeds to physically show how positive or negative the news at that moment was. Every ten minutes the feeds would be scanned and the balloons inflated or deflated accordingly.

There were times during the show that the news was so negative it caused several to pop! I think this is a great installation, acting as a physically reacting device visualising temporary and unpredictable patterns of news stories.

Mor Bakal – “Sonic Sketch”:

Visualising gestures was a really interesting part of Mor Bakal‘s project. The pendulum drawing device made really intricate line drawings which she later translated into beautifully detailed 3D prints.

 

Daiki Ichikawa – “Phantom”:

On a more intangible note, Daiki Ichikawa‘s project about saving data in physical space was a very interesting way of documenting previous events. Ichikawa names these phantoms, he explains his aim to cause “the boundary between digital and physical environments is becoming increasingly blurred. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) allow us to digitally create phantoms in a physical space, for those who are deceased. While watching his short films the effect is surprisingly powerful, walking up to a spot and knowing that here, at one time, someone had died in a car accident.

 

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