DUX2007 - Data Visualization

Alice Toth, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 @ 9:14 pm

Data visualization was touched upon a number of times throughout the DUX07 conference.

In David Pescovitz’ keynote address on Monday, he mentioned that since the 1980s we’ve seen three waves of technology: PC Computing, communicating, and sensing. We’re now in the fourth wave which is sense making -- how do we make sense of all the data that’s out there. How do we deal with search queries that return hundreds of thousand of lines of results. How do we start to make connections between the data.

One way we deal with sense making is through data visualization -- a concept which is starting to filter out beyond the research labs into the commercial space. Through data visualization, we can take huge sets of information and present them in such a way that it:

• allows us to immediately see how items are related to one another;
• gives us a more immediate way to see patterns;
• becomes a default to try and understand huge amounts of information.

In addition to visualization, Pescovitz touched a bit on how we're using collective filtering to try and make sense of all this data. We turn to social networks we may trust, such as Digg, to take advantage of the filtering layer created by that network’s society. Anything to help us get a head start on parsing the data.

Later on in the conference, Nick Cawthon talked about aesthetics and efficiency in visualization of data. His talk referenced research he had done using different types of data visualization in order to determine what participants thought of the graphic (pretty or ugly) and whether or not it worked (they could complete a task such as finding a file). An interesting outcome was that the higher the user-rated aesthetic, the more reluctant the user was to abandon that particular data visualization. At a basic level, if the interactive graphic was perceived as “pretty”, the user was willing to spend a bit more time trying to learn how to use it.

Fascinating ideas and I know we're just scratching the surface of its potential.

Technorati Tags: Design, Information Architecture, Usability, DUX07

user experience design

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