Everybody complains that art, design and research in information visualization should be talking more to each other.

Here is a unique opportunity: Andrew Vande Moere and I will be hosting a symposium at IV10: DAVis, the 5th International Symposium on Design and Aesthetics in Visualisation.

From the call:

“This symposium aims to bring together researchers and practitioners of design, art and related disciplines. The goal is to share their stories and experiences on how the needs and goals of both users and businesses are met through information visualisation.

It supports the publication of research in two general domains: Design and Aesthetics. Design refers to the development of visualisation as a creative design process. Aesthetics refers to the role of user experience in visualisation, as understood in three distinct components: aesthetic experience, experience of meaning, and emotional experience.

This symposium presents an opportunity to explore these issues and their consequences for the field of information visualization. In particular, we encourage the submission of design critiques; case studies, possibly with accompanying evaluation studies or critical reflections; position papers; or reports on the impact that visualization research or visualization use has had on the work and life of people. In this context, the story of failures or abandoned approaches can be as informative as descriptions of success. The fields of application are open, and can reach from traditional screen-based graphs, over innovative multi-touch interfaces, to dynamic media architecture displays.”

So – designers, coders, artists, visualizers – go forth and write!

Update: make sure to check out the submission requirements and procedure up at the IV main page.

Beware: the deadline is tight: March 1. March 21 But honestly, you would not have started earlier, anyways – right? Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, and we are really looking forward to your submissions.

Generative Gestaltung is a unique new book on generative design (and related disciplines like visualization). It is quite example–driven, with loads of typical techniques explored in short processing sketches. At the moment it is only available in German, but I hear an English version is in the works. The website features all code examples and some community functions. Very nice concept and execution overall, and it really makes me eager on learning processing better :)

In November 2009, I did a mini-project together with Boris Müller and the boys from raureif. My task was to create a visualization of the survey results of an event. The participants were asked to rate the events with respect to 9 questions on a scale from 1-10. As we did not have much time (nor budget), we went for the first good-looking idea available. What could that be? Right, a radial visualization (be damned, circles for non-circular data!). Anyways, I produced a quick funky mockup with random data: Each circle sector stands for one person’s ratings, and these are ordered by their average rating. For each single rating, I draw a semi-transparent wedge, with distance from center as well as color indicating the rating’s value. Special treatment is provided for the overall event rating (a more opaque, smaller wedge). For visual spice, a black spline connects all the average values of the ratings.

So, we agreed on it and shipped it. Seeing it with the real data, however, made me wonder if I should have looked into typical rating statistics a bit more :)

Well. Lesson learnt. It is a nice little visualization nevertheless.

Which reminds me of an excellent article about how to prevent to uniform votes already in the interface.

As a bonus, here is a little remake using protovis with again, ridiculously few lines of code: (more…)

On the occasion of the recent fifth birthday of infosthetics.com blog, your premier source for fresh projects from visualization and information aesthetics, I made a custom adaptation of the elastic lists principle for the – up to now – 1950 posts of the site. Try it out, and read more about it here.

Happy birthday infosthetics!

Finally, the videos from our “Living with information” workshop are up. Find below my two favorites: Andrew Vande Moere for the best stories and Paolo Ciuccarelli for the most beautiful slides ever. Enjoy!

Andrew Vande Moere from FHP Interface Design on Vimeo.

Paolo Ciuccarelli from FHP Interface Design on Vimeo.

Find the whole album here.

I contributed to the user interface design chapter in the recent Springer book “Dynamic Taxonomies and Faceted Search – Theory, Practice, and Experience” (online version) edited by Giovanni Maria Sacco and Yannis Tzitzikas. Based on a definition of core principles and challenges, the chapter presents a taxonomy of navigation modes observed in existing applications. On that basis, design patterns for enabling these navigation modes in user interfaces as well as extensions and related approaches are discussed. The chapter closes with a section on personalizing faceted search.

The book itself covers a wide range of topics and current research questions related to Dynamic Taxonomies and Faceted Search from an academic point of view.

You can find a pre-print version of the User Interface Design chapter here. Thanks also to my co–authors Sébastian Ferré, Saverio Perugini, Jonathan Koren and Yi Zhang!

I am excited to announce the following symposium at FH Potsdam:

The symposium »Living with Information: Architecture and Visualization« (October 16 , 2009 at FH Potsdam) will juxtapose experiences and results from the MACE project with thoughts and design approaches from practitioners in the fields of design, architecture and technology. Guided by five central questions, we will explore future trends in information visualization, the relationship of visualization tools and creativity plus issues like information over- and underload.

I am really looking forward to the unique speaker combination we put together:

• Miguel Cardoso from bestiario,
• Paolo Ciuccarelli from Politecnico Milano /density design,
• Georgi Kobilarov from FU Berlin / dbpedia,
• Norbert Palz (CV + info) and
• Andrew Vande Moere from infosthetics.com!

In addition, Prof. Boris Müller and I will provide a rear-mirror view and outlook of our activities related to the MACE project… A wide spectrum, but hopefully all held together by the central issue of the workshop and the five questions we prepared for the speakers.

Hope to see you there – register soon – space is limited!

On a related note, the Potsdam–based W3C office opens on the day before, which should be quite interesting, too.

This month’s WIRED UK magazine features a remix of one of the well-formed.eigenfactor visualizations in their infoporn section.

Together with my colleagues in Seattle and Umea, I modified the “change over time” visualization to tell a specific story: The formation of neuroscience as a field of its own right over the last decade. Originally scattered across related disciplines (such as medicine, molecular and cell biology or neurology), the neuroscientific journals start to define a niche of their own, reflected in the dense cluster emerging in 2005.

Download a larger version with full explanatory text here: png (1MB) pdf (4MB)

And here is some more in depth info: (more…)

Here’s a new project of mine:

X by Y visualizes all submissions to the prix ars electronica, from the early beginnings in 1987 up to 2009. The goal is to characterize the “ars world” in quantitative terms. A series of diagrams groups and juxtaposes the submissions by years, categories, prizes and countries. The graphics are composed of little dots (each representing a single submission) to provide a visual scale for the statistical statements and thematize the relation of the totality and the individual.

Their placement is computed with a Fibonacci series, imitating the arrangement of sunflower seeds – a very efficient and visually mesmerizing way of packing small elements into a large circle. Color distinguishes the submission categories, and a diamond shape marks submission that have been awarded a prize. The numbers in the center of the diagram elements are constructed by skipping points in the pattern – establishing a tight connection between the number and the individuals, but also demonstrating the duality of the two concepts.

The project is currently at display at the history lounge of ars electronica 09.

The project was done in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for media.art.research. Find all diagrams and some more info here: X by Y. Also, don’t miss the other works on the poster over at vis.mediaartresearch.at.

SIGGRAPH 2009 is over. Traditionally renowned as a graphics geek fest, with a focus on 3D and animation, I was not surprised to hear “GPU” in every second overheard sentence. But there is also the other side of SIGGRAPH: the art exhibitions, the emerging technologies exhibition and the freshly introduced information aesthetics program with talks, a panel and an exhibition. I was present there with the well-formed.eigenfactor project and also had the chance to give a little talk.

(more…)