information designer

I want you to want me is an interactive installation, presented as an interactive installation, displayed on a 56” high-resolution touch screen, hung vertically on a wall in a dark room. On screen is an interactive sky, whose weather (sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, etc.) can be controlled by the viewer.

Through the sky float hundreds of blue (male) and pink (female) balloons, each representing a single dating profile. The brighter balloons are younger people; the darker balloons older.

The piece has five formal movements: Who I Am, What I Want, Snippets, Matchmaker, and Breakdowns. Take a look at the beautiful screens generated by this data.

It was commissioned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art for their Design and the Elastic Mind show.

As for the type of work I plan to feature on this blog, the visualizations done on Digg Labs is an exceptional example. These Flash based data visualizations use real-time data to build and reveal graphical elements that represent upcoming stories on Digg.

Currently there are five visualization available, some are more useful than others, while a couple I find are just beautiful and interesting to watch (some are available as screensavers).

Developed by Stamen Design:

We are also in continuous exploration mode with Digg’s data, generating internal research artifacts which provide new and useful views of the Digg community’s behavior (see “Research,” below). Our goal is to continually extend the possibilities of live data visualization, while addressing Digg’s real business needs.

These visualizations stand out to me for a few reasons, they are well designed and elegant to look at, they animations are smooth and continually build upon themselves, the data is interesting and of a fast pace that is quickly evolving.

I think an area of improvement would be the level of interactivity and customization. Currently you only have 3 options for which data feed you get and the interactivity it typically rollover effects or click to learn more about a story. I’d love to see some zooming or three dimensional navigations.

Digg has an API to allow third party developers to explore the use of their data. The possibilities with this are endless as there are so many opportunities to explore a better way to discover and explore current events (and viral web clips).