Comments on: For Data Viz or Political Junkies

By: Dave Land

Dave Land — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:02:11 +0000

Data visualization will increasingly _support_ narrative, not necessarily _supplant_ it. Naturally, there are some stories that will continue to be best told the old-fashioned way, as stories. Just as naturally, there will be “stories”, like this one, best told by dynamic information visualization tools.

In addition, I don’t think that pure data visualization completely tells the story. As you click through the categories in the Times visualization, the data slews slightly towards Clinton or Obama for all demographic groups but one: for Blacks, all fifty states fairly fling themselves against the Obama side of the chart.

There is a long, deep, moving story to be told about a long-marginalized people lining up behind one of their own behind that graphical shift. There could be a long, deep, but ultimately frustrating story to be told about opportunities lost to bring the country together after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, in the 1930s, when nearly the entire country was plunged into the kind of poverty that had principally been the lot of blacks or in the 1960s, as blacks sought and received cautious measures of fairness.

Those stories may well be supported by dynamic data visualizations, but would most likely rely more on the strength of the narrative stories behind them.

As radio did not replace books, or films radio, or television either radio or films, data visualization will not replace narrative, but will merely broaden the array of tools that skilled rhetoricians will use to “tell their stories”.

By: Ryan Mulloy

Ryan Mulloy — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:01:30 +0000

Not only is a great example of data visualization, but it also demonstrates the advantages of RIAs. I have always believed some of the stronger points of RIAs are the ability to leverage context and motion (motion is a very underrated in my opinion). If the page was refreshed on each view, then they would lose a tremendous amount of impact. The ability to see a transitional rearrangement from one context to another can help define patterns better. Look what happens as you move up and down the age groups, it becomes clear that the older you are, the more you like Hillary. Would you still be able to see this pattern under traditional page refreshing? Probably, but it becomes much more clear and evident when used in an RIA.

By: dgoetz

dgoetz — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:06:02 +0000

I am currently enrolled in Bentley’s Human Factors and Info Design Masters Program and they are huge into visualization there. They find visualization important enough that the head of the program, Dr. Bill Gribbons, teaches a class ever spring dedicated just to this subject. It is called Information Visualization and while it is probably the hardest course in the program (not due to the subject matter but due to the teacher); you learn a lot about the subject.
I feel that with the continually decreasing attention span of the human race, visualization will eventually replace narration as the most commonly used way to communicate information to the world.