Information visualization on the web
August 25, 2007
I got the link to this excellent post during my first InfoVis class at VT, it’s a great collection of Information Visualization projects on the web. A must-bookmark for anyone interested in visualizations. The web is like the melting pot for such applications, and that’s understandable, if not for anything else, then for the sheer number of data sets available to visualize.
As I was browsing through them, I enjoyed some more than the others, and that led me to wonder if I can setup an experiment to rate them. That’s pretty difficult though. If providing a “higher insight” is considered as the ultimate goal of a visualization, then it becomes rather hard to rate them. Insights are a function of so many things that even an experimental setup may find it hard to extract the “Interface driven insight” part of them. Especially when the visualizations themselves are about such diverse subjects. However, what attracts me to visualizations is the fact that they are so much like works of art, and hence, some of them just stand apart.
The stand apart for me was the Hans Rosling talk at TED. You’ve got to watch it.
It was simply overwhelming to see all such info visualization apps. Certainly most of them qualified to be any organization killer apps for Operation System Support(OSS).
Its really difficult to rate them. But it just stuck me , What is their basic purpose. Its the ease and aptness to leverage coherent and coupled data ,clearly.
In simpler words the turn-around time can be essential factor to decide the purpose because …
for example in Telecom domain, where network infrastructure and business support system(BSS) have compex intermingling, it really frustrates the service providers to decide How to structure which service? How to provide assurance and billing quickly? How to decide what provisioning is required to enable particular service?
and HOW FAST it can be done.
So i think i am clear about the aptness and clarity part. I don’t know but MANY fall out of that “FAST” thing. But its easy to say than to apprehend