Many Eyes : Tour

Tour

The heart of the site is a collection of data visualizations. You may want to begin by browsing through these collections—if you'd rather explore than read directions, take a look!

On Many Eyes you can:

1. View and discuss visualizations
2. View and discuss data sets
3. Create visualizations from existing data sets
If you register, you can also:
  4. Rate data sets and visualizations
5. Upload your own data
6. Create and participate in topic centers
7. Select items to watch
8. Track your contributions, watchlist, and topic centers
9. See comments that others have written to you
 

View and discuss visualizations

All the visualizations on Many Eyes have an attached discussion forum. As you explore a visualization, you may find a view that you'd like to talk about or share. If you post a comment, your "view" is saved along with your comment so others can see what you're seeing.

Each visualization lets you select data items by clicking. Your selection will be highlighted in a bright color, so that you can refer to those items in your comments. This simple feature is very convenient: it's much nicer to say "Look at the circled part of the graph" than "look at the thing sort of at the upper right".

    screenshot of interactive visualization
Interactive visualization


screenshot of visualization comments
Comments about this visualization


screenshot of form for posting a new comment
Form for posting a new comment

 

comment screenshot
Detail of a comment contributed by anonymous user


visualization list screenshot
Screenshot showing part of the collection of visualizations on the site

 

 

View and discuss data sets

All visualizations in Many Eyes are based on a collection of shared data sets held on the site. You'll see that many data sets and visualizations are the subject of an active discussion. Anyone can browse the list of data sets.
    dataset list screenshot
Screenshot of list of data sets uploaded to the site.

 

 

Create visualizations from existing data sets

One of the most exciting features of Many Eyes is the ability to create interactive visualizations from any of the data sets on the site.

Finding the right way view your data is as much an art as a science. The visualizations provided on Many Eyes range from the ordinary to the experimental.

    create visualization screenshot
Detail of the process of creating a visualization.
 
 

Rate data sets and visualizations

Rating data sets and visualizations is a helpful way to let users quickly find some of the best content on Many Eyes. Each time you rate an item, you attach a "plus one" or a "minus one" to it. Many Eyes ratings also have a qualitative aspect, which allows you to express whether, for instance, you like a visualization because it is funny or because it is beautiful.
You may also want to flag a data set as being either a "test" or having a "suspicious source."
    visualization screenshot with interface for rating

Interface for rating a visualization

 

Upload your own data (registered users only)

After you register, you can upload new data sets to Many Eyes. Seeding the site with shared data is an important part of being able to engage others in collective sensemaking and insight sharing.
 

 

Tour tutorial


 

You may also want to refer to our Data Format & Style page,
that covers all the intricacies of formatting and uploading.

   

 

Create and participate in topic centers (registered users only)

Topic centers are a great way of organizing content around a theme of interest to you. They function like small portals where you can collect all visualizations and data sets that are related to your theme. You can also start discussions in a topic center.

 
All registered users can create and join topic centers. Only members can contribute visualizations, data sets, and comments to a topic center.

    topic center screenshot
Screenshot of the collection of items in a topic center: list of discussions
at the top, visualizations in the middle and data sets at the bottom
 

Select items to watch (registered users only)


Users with an account can choose to be notified when there is new activity around a visualization or a data set of interest to them. To monitor items of interest, simply click on the "watch this" button. You can stop monitoring any visualization (or data set) by simply clicking on the "quit watching" button (or by going to your user page, which lists the "quit watching")
    watch this screenshot
Below each visualization (and data set) you will find a "watch this" button

watchlist screenshot
Watchlist on user page, showing new activity around watched items

 

Track the visualizations and data sets you have contributed (registered users only)

As a registered user, you can keep track of all your activity on Many Eyes. This also makes it easier for others to interact with you on the site because your activity history creates your identity here.
    my stuff screenshot
Screenshot of a registered user's activity.

 

 

See comments that others have written to you (registered users only)

Registered users automatically get a "user page" that compiles all of their activity on the site (as well as the activity in their watchlist). Others can leave messages to a user by using the "Messages" feature at the bottom of user pages.

The owner of a user page has mediation privileges over messages left on their user page: they may either delete or reply to messages left for them.

Could we partner with this IBM project to produce our visualisations? My instinct is not (as it seems to be more of a 'playground' than a professional service) but I might be missing something...

Training | marketingQED

Information Visualisation Workshops - London - 6th July 2011 to 8th July 2011

In July 2011, marketingQED is delighted once again to present the three courses covering topics in information visualisation at the Royal College of Physicians building in London. All courses are taught by Stephen Few, founder of Perceptual Edge, a leading consultancy that was established to help organizations like yours learn to design simple information displays for effective analysis and communication. The courses on offer are:

Show Me the Numbers: Table and Graph Design - 6th July 2011

This full-day course will teach you how to effectively communicate quantitative business data using tables and graphs. You will learn how to select the appropriate medium of communication (table vs. graph, and which type) and how to visually design each component to express your message clearly and compellingly.

Dashboard Design for at-a-Glance Monitoring - 7th July 2011

Dashboards offer an exciting new way to provide people at a glance with the critical information they must monitor to do their jobs. This full-day course reaches past the hype to give you the unique design skills required to build dashboards that really work.

Now You See It: Visual Data Analysis - 8th July 2011

Most business data analysis requires skills and practices involving the use of graphs that can be easily learned, but resources that teach them are almost impossible to find. Almost all books and courses on data analysis teach sophisticated statistical and financial analysis techniques, but only about 10% of business data analysis requires them. This full-day course is for those responsible for the remaining 90%.

To download a brochure giving further details of these workshops, simply complete this form and a link to a brochure will be sent to you. If you have any issues completing the form please email qed@marketingqed.com.

Information Visualisation Workshops - Vienna - 5th October 2011 to 7th October 2011

Due to conflicting dates the "Information Visualisation Workshops" in Vienna with Stephen Few had to be rescheduled from March 16th-18th to October 5th-7th, 2011. Many thanks for your understanding.

In October 2011, marketingQED is delighted to present three courses covering topics in information visualisation at the Architekturzentrum Wien (Az W) in Vienna. All courses are taught by Stephen Few, founder of Perceptual Edge, a leading consultancy that was established to help organizations like yours learn to design simple information displays for effective analysis and communication. The courses on offer are:

Show Me the Numbers: Table and Graph Design - 5th October 2011

This full-day course will teach you how to effectively communicate quantitative business data using tables and graphs. You will learn how to select the appropriate medium of communication (table vs. graph, and which type) and how to visually design each component to express your message clearly and compellingly.

Dashboard Design for at-a-Glance Monitoring - 6th October 2011

Dashboards offer an exciting new way to provide people at a glance with the critical information they must monitor to do their jobs. This full-day course reaches past the hype to give you the unique design skills required to build dashboards that really work.

Now You See It: Visual Data Analysis - 7th October 2011

Most business data analysis requires skills and practices involving the use of graphs that can be easily learned, but resources that teach them are almost impossible to find. Almost all books and courses on data analysis teach sophisticated statistical and financial analysis techniques, but only about 10% of business data analysis requires them. This full-day course is for those responsible for the remaining 90%.

To download a brochure giving further details of these workshops, simply complete this form and a link to a brochure will be sent to you. If you have any issues completing the form please email qed@marketingqed.com.

Details of London courses being run by Stephen Few. Might be interesting for someone from MS to go. If you agree with this, who do you think should go. Me or you (or someone else?).

Visual Business Intelligence

I’ve just returned from a week in Pamplona, Spain. No, I didn’t run with the bulls, but I did something equally exciting: I deliberated with the judges at Malofiej 19, an international competition and summit dedicated to journalistic infographics. I and 9 other judges worked hard for 3½ days to review over 1,000 print entries and 300 online entries, resulting in 7 gold medals, plus around 25 silver and 70 bronze medals for infographic excellence.

(Pictured from left to right: Ryan Sparrow of Ball State University, Stephen Few of Perceptual Edge, Joe Ward of the New York Times, and Matt Perry of the San Diego Union Tribune.)

I learned a great deal during the week and made several new friends. I was deeply impressed with several extraordinary examples of infographics that demonstrated visual eloquence both through superb storytelling and graphical design. Infographics can be extraordinarily powerful when used appropriately (that is, when pictures work better than words) and well designed by combining beauty (appealing and engaging form) and usability (spot on functionality), without compromising either.

This year’s top prizes:

Best of Show (print): National Geographic, for “Gulf of Mexico: A Geography of Offshore Oil,” the story of oil drilling and drilling rights, primarily along the coast of Louisiana.

Best of Show (online): New York Times, for its demonstration of Mariano Rivera’s unique pitching style, titled “How Mariano Rivera Dominates Hitters.” Take the time to watch this amazing combination of narration and motion graphics.

Best Map: National Geographic, for “Rivers of the World,” a gorgeous map of the world’s rivers and lakes.

These infographics are exquisite examples of how well words and pictures can be combined to inform clearly and beautifully to engage and enlighten.

In addition to working as a judge, I also spoke at the summit. The title of my presentation was “Infographics and the Brain: Designing Graphics to Inform.”

Take care,

One of the other 'superstars' in the world of DV. Have a few more links etc to follow. Safe to say he is not a fan of Mr McAndless. He is availble for consulting (@$4k/day eek)...

Welcome to Visualizing.org

Visualizing.org is a community of creative people working to make sense of complex issues through data and design… and it’s a shared space and free resource to help you achieve this goal.

Why Visualizing.org?

By some estimates, we now create more data each year than in the entirety of prior human history. Data visualization helps us approach, interpret, and extract knowledge from this information. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen government agencies, NGOs, and companies open up their data for the public to see and use. And we’ve seen data visualization figure more prominently in design curricula, conference programs, and the media. We created Visualizing.org because we want to help connect the proliferation of public data… with a community that can help us understand this data… with the general public.

What is Visualizing.org? What can I do on the site?

For designers:
  • Visualizing is a place to showcase your work, get feedback, ensure that your work is seen by lots of people and gets used by teachers, journalists, and conference organizers to help educate the public about various world issues
  • Visualizing is a free resource to search for data
  • Use Visualizing to keep up with and be inspired by the latest work from other designers and design schools
  • Learn about new visualization tools, blogs, books and other resources to help your work
  • Everything you upload remains your sole and exclusive property and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License
For teachers and schools:
  • Visualizing is a place to exhibit the collective work of your students, organize assignments and class projects, and help your students find data for their own visualizations
  • We’re working on new tools to help you share teaching material with other teachers
  • As an Academic Partner, your students are eligible to participate in various design competitions. We hosted the Visualizing Marathon 2010 in New York. Based on the overwhelming success of the first Marathon, we plan to host many more around the world in 2011. If your students are interested, just email us. Your students are also eligible to compete in our online challenges.
  • To learn more, contact Charlene Manuel
For bloggers and journalists:
  • Visualizing is a resource to find data visualizations about a wide variety of world issues to inform and accompany your own reporting – and it’s easy to embed visualizations and widgets from Visualizing on your own site
For conference organizers:
  • As a Knowledge Partner, Visualizing allows you to use data visualizations at your conferences under a Creative Commons License
  • To learn more, contact Charlene Manuel
For all:
  • Visualizing is a new and fun online resource to learn more about the world in all its complexity and inter-dependence -- and become more comfortable with data and how it can be visually represented

How does it work?

The site is open and free to use. Everything you upload remains your sole and exclusive property and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License. Simply put, this means that anyone can share, copy, remix, or build upon the visualization as long as: (i) it is used non-commercially; and (ii) the visualization’s creator and source are credited.

Got a question? A suggestion for how we can improve the site?

Contact us at info@visualizing.org

The Data Viz Whizzes From Mint Are Launching A New Startup, Visual.ly

The team behind Mint.com's popular graphics, Stewart Langille and Lee Sherman, are launching their own data visualization startup called Visual.ly.

It will be focused on telling stories based on big reams of data through infographics. Langille and Sherman will do some of the graphics themselves, but they also want to establish Visual.ly as a platform for people to plug in data and have infographics pumped out automatically.

Visually is being backed with $400,000 in seed money, with Dave McClure's 500 Startups leading the round.

Here's a video explaining the company:

Whoa, very interesting Data Vis start-up...

Good video explaining the service too.

Wonder if we can partner with them??? Or at least use their platform...

Could be a big opp for us.

Ask E.T.: Executive decision support systems

Response to Executive Decision Support Systems

IDEAS FOR MONITORING BUSINESS AND OTHER PROCESSES

Edward Tufte

(1) See Peter Drucker's new book, The Essential Drucker, for a thoughtful chapter on "the information executives need today." That is, you should start by considering the intellectual problems that the displays are supposed to help with. The point of information displays is to assist thinking; therefore, ask first of all: What are the thinking tasks that the displays are supposed to help with?

(2) It is essential to build in systematic checks of data quality into the display and analysis system. For example, good checks of the data on revenue recognition must be made, given the strong incentives for premature recognition. Beware, in management data, of what statisticians call "sampling to please"--selecting, sorting, fudging, choosing data so as to please management. Sampling to please occurs, for example, when the outflow from a polluting factory into the Hudson River is measured by dipping the sampling test-tube into the cleaner rather than the dirtier effluent.

(3) For information displays for management, avoid heavy-breathing metaphors such as the mission control center, the strategic air command, the cockpit, the dashboard, or Star Trek. As Peter Drucker once said, good management is boring. If you want excitement, don't go to a good management information system.

Simple designs showing high-resolution data, well-labelled information in tables and graphics will do just fine. One model might be the medical interface in Visual Explanations (pages 110-111) and the articles by Seth Powsner and me cited there. A model for tables might be the supertable, shown in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, p. 179. More generally, see chapter 9 of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The displays should often be accompanied by annotation, details from the field, and other supplements.

Sparklines show high-resolution data and also work to reduce the recency bias prevalent in data analysis and decision-making. Sparklines are ideal for executive decision support systems. See our threads on sparklines:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001OR&topic_id=1&topic=

and on the implementation of sparklines

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000Lk&topic_id=1&topic=

(4) For understanding a process and for designing a display for understanding a process, a good way to learn about what is going on is to watch the actual data collection involved in describing the process. Watch the observations being made and recorded; chances are you will learn a lot about the meaning and quality of the numbers and about the actual process itself. Talk to the people making the actual measurements; maybe you'll learn something.

(5) Measurement itself (and the apparent review of the numbers) can govern a process. For example, in printing my books, I ask that during the press run that the density of the black ink be measured in 6 or 8 different positions on every 3000th sheet being printed. These pulled sheets are then inspected shortly after the run and before the next run. The idea is to try to ensure that the color of the black type is uniform and at the right level of blackness in 3 ways: (1) across the 8 pages printed up on each sheet of paper, called a "form", (2) over the 40,000 sheets printed of that form, and (3) over the many forms making up the entire book. We sometimes review these pulled sheets the next day to check these density readings and to yell at the printer if there is a problem. But mainly the mere fact that the printers are making these measurements keeps the process in control. And the fact that someone might review the measurements.

Note that this example is mainly just common sense in workaday action; no jargon about an Executive Decision Protocol Monitoring Support Dashboard System is needed. In fact, such jargon would be an impediment to thinking.

(6) My own encounter with a real business trying to improve management data and the display of that data was in consulting for Bose. At one point it appeared to me that too many resources were devoted to collecting data. It is worth thinking about why employees are filling out forms for management busybody bureaucrats rather than doing something real, useful, productive. The story of this work is told in Michael H. Martin, "The Man Who Makes Sense of Numbers," Fortune, October 27, 1997, pp. 273-276; and in James Surowiecki, "Sermon on the Mountain: How Edward Tufte led Bose out of the land of chartjunk," Metropolis, January 1999, pp. 44-46. Both accounts make me appear excessively heroic. These articles are posted in the NEW section at http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/fortune_97 http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/metropolis_0199

(7) Most of all, the right evidence needs to be located, measured, and displayed. And different evidence might be needed next quarter or next year.

-- Edward Tufte, August 27, 2001

Some interesting thoughts from Edward Tufte on DV in business, worth a read.