Digital Design Blog

Information Visualization and the Art of Making Data Easy to Digest Online

Much has been made of Mint.com, a money management site that makes it easy to get an aggregated picture of how you spend your money, regardless of its source or which bank it resides in. Most of the buzz has focused on the well designed charts and tables that present your finances simply, recognizably and educationally . Mint.com simplifies product comparisons and budgeting by revealing what’s interesting about the data, without you having to manipulate it or analyze it in any great depth.

“Information visualization” attempts to take data and reveal insights, so that people can quickly understand it. It considers the types of decisions that people wish to make and how the data can be presented to best support that decision making. It makes data useful, and even attractive.While Edward Tufte has long been cited as a pioneer in this field, there has been a flourish of innovation (and growing appreciation) of this space:

• Gapminder has taken the world census and economic data and charted it so that a clear picture of geographic change emerges across the decades, challenging preconceived notions about rich and poor countries
• MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition considers how people drown in information and the role that design plays in helping them cope
• Presidential Watch 2008 maps what 292 bloggers are saying about the presidential elections, providing tools to distinguish among communities and identify the hubs of influence
• The London Air Quality Network provides a downloadable 3D map that lets users not only check pollution levels for where they work, walk and live but see projected air quality in the same areas
• Newsmap is an arresting visual way to see what stories have momentum in which countries over time, allowing side by side country comparisons

Companies go to great pains to provide data to their customers online - activity statements, monthly sales figures, usage minutes, trip duration - but it often comes out of a database and into a table or spreadsheet with little thought for its use. There is often no interpretation or analysis, just raw numbers or other data points for the visitor to consider.Sites that are winning praise and loyalty are those take the next step and tell the user whether this result is good, bad, different from average, improving or deteriorating, or lets them readily compare items. These sites recognize that users aren’t asking for data but information, a subtle distinction that has Mint users scorning their bank websites for a more useful display of the same data points.