Data Visualization, Infographic Design, Visual Thinking, Product Development and Marketing professional fascinated by good infographics. Always looking for better ways to get the point across.
Very funny video from TEDActive, by Sebastian Wernicke that analyses the best and worst of TEDTalks using statistics and word analysis.
In a brilliantly tongue-in-cheek analysis, Sebastian Wernicke turns the tools of statistical analysis on TEDTalks, to come up with a metric for creating “the optimum TEDTalk” based on user ratings. How do you rate it? “Jaw-dropping”? “Unconvincing”? Or just plain “Funny”?
“Follow the Money” is a video summarizing the results from the project by Northwestern University grad students Daniel Grady and Christian Thiemann. Using data from the website Where’s George?, they have been able to track the movement of U.S. paper currency. What can you learn from this? That there are natural borders within the U.S. that don’t necessarily follow state borders, and it can also be used to predict the spread of disease because it maps movement of people within the U.S.
From Maria Popova on BrainPickings.org: This may sound like dry statistical uninterestingness, but the video visualization of the results is rather eye-opening, revealing how money — not state borders, not political maps, not ethnic clusters — is the real cartographer drawing our cultural geography. The project was a winner at the 2009 Visualization Challenge sponsored by the National Science Foundation and AAA.
From Manuel Lima on VisualComplexity.com: Some places, such as Los Angeles, California, have many bills passing through it from across the nation, while others, such as Anderson County in Tennessee - Grady’s home - have bills circulating mainly within a more local neighborhood. Shown here are images from the video. The data from the Where’s George? project is in fact so pertinent that is also being used by researchers to predict the spread of flu across the United States.
Created by Kenichi Tanaka for his final thesis project, Japan - The Strange Conutry is an infographic video exploring the statistics about Japan and the Japanese people. Available in both English and Japanese language versions.
NYTimes.com posted this video by designer Steven Heller called “Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages”. You may not agree with Steven’s opinions on which icons were better than others, but it is fascinating that every city for every olympics has tried to redesign the icons to add their own visual personality (with the exception of Montreal in 1976 that reused the icons from 1972).
Designer Steven Heller traces the evolution of the tiny symbols for each Olympic sport since their appearance in 1936.
At the age of only 45 (in Sept 2006), Professor Pausch was told that only 4% of pancreatic cancer sufferers (of which he was now diagnosed as one) lived for 5 years after their diagnosis. At the time of the “Last Lecture”, due to his deteriorating medical condition, Professor Pausch was told his odds had reduced to 3 to 6 months of good health left (at best).
I have spent 3 hours preparing the mind map for you (including the time spent re-watching the video) and I have learnt so much more by being actively involved. For this reason I strongly recommend that you take the time to read and study the mind map after you watch the video. I believe it will be well worth your time.
If you haven’t seen this video, I highly recommend watching this. It’s about 1:15 long, so watch it over lunch or when you have enough time, but it is truly inspirational.
Loaded with labor statistics, How Will You Manage? is a new infographic video put together by XPLANE for Kronos Workforce Management. Using a mix of statistics, illustrations and some infographics the video does a good job of looking at our changing workforce, and the challenges faced by both companies and employees.
Both teams conducted research for the video’s content, and XPLANE developed a forward-thinking storyline that exuded personality and brought the message to life. XPLANE also leveraged existing Kronos visual style and color palette to ensure brand consistency. Created with Apple’s Keynote software, the five-minute video uses simple visuals, text and music to depict the changing state of today’s workforces and what that means for employers.
Xplane has posted a brief case study description of the process they went through with Kronos to develop the video under a very tight timeline to prepare for the Kronos User Conference. I love that they made this with Apple Keynote!
Short but good presentation from Ryan Coleman, the Chief Community Evangelist at VizThink!
Just reading this description unleashes a complex process to help your mind understand what your eyes are looking at. Together, our brain and eyes run through these processes millions upon millions of times daily, all without us even being aware of it. “Designing for Visual Efficiency” looks at the process of how we see and how that knowledge allows you to create designs that are visually efficient.
Ryan Coleman is an entrepreneur, facilitator and information designer from Toronto, ON. Through interactive workshops, facilitated sessions and/or consulting projects Ryan works with clients to organize and refine their ideas and shape them into a common vision that they can act on and share clearly, concisely & consistently. Ryan is also a founding member and Chief Community Evangelist for VizThink, a global community of visual thinkers & practitioners.
Chart Wars is a great, short (5:15) presentation by Alex Lundry on the political power of data visualization and some of the issues surrounding using charts and infographics to promote a specific agenda. Inspired title slide too. Nice job Alex!
TargetPoint’s VP and Director of Research, Alex Lundry, was recently a featured speaker at DC Ignite, an evening of short presentations in which participants are limited to 5 minutes and precisely 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.
What better way to share your Christmas wishes than with augmented reality?!? You can send your own AR Christmas cards courtesy of arwishes.com. You can choose from an assortment of animated images that will appear on screen when you friends and family hold up your Christmas card in front of their computer's webcam.
The cards are printed with the marker, disguised as a holiday image. In this case, the marker is obviously the Christmas Tree.
A number of companies did this last year, sending out cards with an AR marker printed as part of the card, and a number of them are still online. You can also print out a card from the sites to see the image yourself. There will probably be a few more this holiday season as well, but here are some videos from last year's AR cards and links to sites if you want to experience them yourself.
Randy
