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Data Visualization Presentation

I did a presentation for the New Organizing Institute's online Data Management course on Data Visualization.

Here it is!

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La Lorem Ipsum

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Yeah that's right. Graphs THAT ARE FRESH. But seriously. The timeline feature is especially nice, you can see what % of your visitors explores your site and what routes they're taking. Very cool.

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We would be f-ing set.

PRO TIP: Drag the site smaller in your browser (or visit on your phone). Note how the CSS reconfigures itself to the browser size.

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that is all

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This is how it should be!

Data that's fluid, that does the math for you, that's smart enough to know what it's all about.

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Err I mean slavery footprint. Whoops.

Still, looking at this site from just-technical viewpoint it's pretty impressive, but yet, I'm not sure.

Quick message aside: Is anyone else totally thrown by the tone of the site? I mean the animations and transitions and hashed navigation is impressive. But man, does not really reach me. Becomes sort of gimmicky around question 5.

By the end you're told how many slaves work for you (45 for me) it feels sort of intangible. I mean, you're told a number and shown a very pretty map with bubbles and told to sign up for something. There's not a single picture of a person on there.

Anyway, things that are fucking rock about the site, all presentation aside:

Moving you through a multi-process form by going down - up - sideways -every which way, all the while the page never refreshes. Very cool. Hashed navigations and cookies (or some sort of local storage) mean that you can leave the form and it'll return you to the correct spot if you refresh your page or leave.

Feels very touchable. The 'What - Slaves work for me' part at the beginning is probably bloody beautiful on a tablet.

The small animations, from the 'click on an activity you participate in and the animation starts' to the 'pull the slider of how much food and the food falls' are pretty awesome.

The colors and every little unique visual element are awesome.

Yet it still really throws me. After completing this thing I'm supposed to feel guilty and compelled to act, feel motivated, right?

It just doesn't have that punch. Not sure if that's the design or the form or what.

UPDATE: I revisited the site really quickly and skimmed through some of the sections. LOOKED GREAT. I wonder if some of the clunkyness is the designers were just so used to running through it quickly all the animations and effects seemed awesome (like you're watching a commercial).

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So a friend posted this on facebook and it's pretty funny for fans of Highlights and Lord of the Rings.

But I wanted to point out the background, which I think is pretty cool. They get this effect by using several layers divs with background images. This creates the stacking effect (far away mountains, then closer mountains, then clouds, etc).

The clouds are animated using CSS3's animate functionality, something I've never really played with:  -webkit-animation: cloudOne 437s linear inf; 

Each layer can be set with a different speed, which creates an awesome subtle effect.

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This sounds about right to me and is something I think about when comparing Apple products to Android or Microsoft.

It's not that Apple products ALWAYS totally outdo Android and Microsoft in best-case-head-to-head match ups (although they certainly do often). It's that they're able to create products that have a really low rate of failure at all parts of the User Experience.

Look I love the idea of Android. iOS's sycophantic dependency on iTunes and Apple's atrocious 30% cut from developers and content providers will probably mean I'll never make the switch. But whenever I try (and am thwarted) to uninstall a Verizon bloatware app that they've added, whenever my phone freezes trying to take a picture or quickly save a contact, whenever I remember my operating system was released over a year ago, I die a bit inside. Even if 90% it works great (writing this on my DROIDX2 right now in fact).

We have a finite capacity for disappointment in the technology we build our lives around. What makes Apple users so god damn smug, is that they're so flush with good will for these things they own.

Why can't anyone else do this like Apple?

I have no idea. I think part of the magic is that success begets success. When my Android phone fails, it's part of a trend if shitty products and bad design (why does a search company make phones anyway?). When my Apple product fails, it's a fluke to an otherwise flawless performance (friends with failing iPhones or iMacs never seem to blame Apple for their woes). People their experience into a narrative they've already built about that company and it's products. What I'm still trying to understand is how does that narrative get built, how can it change over time, and how can it be rescued once sullied. I have no idea...

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This sounds about right.

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This sure sounds like us.

(Side note: folks in the design world sure loving talking about their love of failure.  I quite appreciate this -- seems like a realistic view of how creative processes really do work -- however, let's not get too carried away with failing now, shall we?)