Category Archives: data visualisation

Datavis: Making Way for Representative over Abstract Representations

8th
Dec. × ’09
By andrea
We watched Home the other weekend (available on YouTube); a sort of Inconvenient-Truth-meets-BBC-documentary film about the story of the Earth. The scariest chapter of course being humans’ appearance and the destruction of the environment. The issues of global warming aside, it was interesting to note the different approach that this film took to Inconvenient, especially how [...]
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Postdecode – Australian Zipdecode

5th
Nov. × ’09
By andrea
I was going to do something for MashUp Australia and then got sidetracked, and decided to apply Ben Fry’s zipdecode to Australian postcodes. (After seeing that it’s been done for Germany and Switzerland). The data isn’t quite complete (there are about 300 missing suburbs that didn’t have matching postcodes in the data file I got from [...]
Also posted in information aesthetics, project | 3 Comments

Honours Thesis

5th
Nov. × ’09
By andrea
Had a request for my honours thesis from @itsgoodtoseeyou so here it is. Honours Thesis – Information Aesthetics – A Model and Evaluation of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualisation I don’t know why it doesn’t render properly in Preview; it just doesn’t… And, yes, I’ve done this in lieu of blogging anything the last two weeks. Blergh.
Also posted in information aesthetics, personal | 3 Comments

Thoughts on Kyoto: Who’s On Target from Information is Beautiful

9th
Oct. × ’09
By andrea
If you haven’t seen it already, Information is Beautiful posted a wonderful inforgraphic the other day on the Kyoto Protocal Targets. (I’ll just reproduce a fragment here). I KNOW! I did diss Information is Beautiful previously, but I like this one. (Which is odd, because there are comments about readability). It shows how the design decision to [...]
Also posted in critique, infographics, information aesthetics | 5 Comments

The Epitome of Information Aesthetics (according to A. Lau)

29th
Sep. × ’09
By andrea
What are the ‘best’ or most representative examples of information aesthetics visualisation? It of course depends on your definition! So, first thing’s first: here was mine/our definition*: Between the information visualisation research and visualisation art communities lies the emerging phenomenon of information aesthetics. Information aesthetics is proposed as a field which adopts visualisation techniques exhibiting both informational [...]
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Why The Outliers Is Here #5: Let’s define the norms.

22nd
Sep. × ’09
By andrea
Is Wattenberg’s Baby Name Voyager really that good? (Yes. Find out why in a future post). Should we really listen to everyone in information visualisation? (Er, no. I guess that’s another post!) What’s more, the accepted norms in information aesthetics really hasn’t been defined. Information visualisation has been around for yolks. The two fields are not the [...]
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Why The Outliers Is Here #4: Less is more. Let’s reduce the information load, not increase it.

21st
Sep. × ’09
By andrea
It’s a little counter-intuitive, I know (with all of us creating craploads of digital/physical/neurological… data a day), but bear with me. It’s about moving up the data-to-wisdom hierarchy, not across it. Let’s say that each visualisation project is a data point. Currently, some visualisation blogs out there reproduce data, ie: infosthetics and visual complexity, which is fine, [...]
Also posted in blogs | 3 Comments

Why The Outliers Is Here #2: There aren’t (m)any female visualisation bloggers.

17th
Sep. × ’09
By andrea
And there should be, in this field, really. I mean, think about it. Information aesthetics is about engagement, narrative, emotions, thinking about multiple things concurrently. Women are best at these things, not men! So why are the men talking about it?! I dunno. =) Not, of course, discounting Fernanda Viegas and others.
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Why The Outliers Is Here #1: Fighting On Our Territory

16th
Sep. × ’09
By andrea
There are a few reasons why The Outliers needs to be here. And I want to be quite frank about this. I’ll be posting five points (starting with most important) for the next week or two. (Also coming up is a post about Graphic Presentation once the book arrives!! woop!)
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