Letting users tell their own data stories

Posted 22/04/2009 by jaimes

Veen has been responsible for some of the benchmark data visualisations of recent years, including Google analytics and more recently Wikirank.

The video is worth a watch, if only because he is as good as is word with regards to visualisation, it’s a great presentation.

He begins with some historical examples, arguing that designers have know for a long time how to bring data alive. These principles have driven powerful visualisations:

• find a story in the data
• find visual clues to illustrate the story
• remove everything that doesn’t tell the story

He then argues that the web is different, it’s interactive, it’s about enabling people to find their own stories. In other words, you’re not designing charts, but chart applications.

People supply their own data - the music they’re listening to, what they’ve been doing with their time, their bio-feedback from running with a Nike+ or heart rate monitor.

So now, what designers are trying to do is create tools to find stories themselves, give people ways of navigating through the data itself, and provide filters to allow users to clarify their story.

He cites the New York Times’ Casualties of War as a particularly successful example of this.

So data visualisation with the user in charge has evolved:

• from story-telling - to - discovering stories
• from visual cues - to - to interactivity
• from editing - to - filtering

A very useful set of principles. It left me thinking about an important dimension - the reader/user’s responsibility.

How has this changed in the move from static to interactive? How have the literacy requirements of reading changed in the move to using?

Thanks to Gareth for the link.