Week 14 Interactive InfoViz Active Research Assignment

View Hayes Valley in a larger map


I found Google Maps a little confusing at first. I appreciated that the instructional video had subtitles because there is no sound on the school computers. I figured out how to add information to the map markers, but I didn’t realize that I had to save it after editing each marker; when I clicked on the markers again, the information disappeared, so I had to go back and redo about half of them, which included looking up the links and the photographs for each one.

Interactive maps would be useful in online travel guides, encyclopedias, or any piece of digital information which documents a geographic location (cities in particular). As with the New York Times, they could easily be used to visualize election results. They could be used in education to provide students with an interactive and detailed view of foreign countries and/or cities, including national landmarks and points of historic interest. An interactive map would make a good application for any iPhone or other portable digital device, as it could be used by travelers to find their way around unfamiliar areas.

A timeline would be more useful for visualizing a sequence of events that has occurred over a period of time – such as a biography of a person’s life, or a series of historical events – whereas a map would be more useful for visualizing spatial information, as it may be used to depict how locations or objects are distributed in space. Aspects of both might be combined by adding graphics to a timeline that show the geographic location at which each event occurred.

Data Visualization Assignment: Correction

The widget in the previous post wasn't displaying all of my information, so here it is in list form:

What I Wish I'd Done Last Weekend on Dipity.

Data Visualization Active Research Assignment

What I Wish I'd Done Last Weekend on Dipity.

I had no significant issues in signing up for or using Dipity. I had never used a site like this before, and I found it interesting that the site combines aspects of data visualization with social networking. I liked the simplicity of the sign-up process (it opened in a pop-up window and only asked for the basics). When I tried to save my timeline after completing it, the last three entries seemed to disappear, but they were just in another area of the page. The timeline itself was a bit difficult to navigate; I had to zoom in to get it to display all of my data.
I think that interactive timelines can be of use in several fields, most obviously education; younger schoolchildren can better absorb notoriously dry information such as history and dates, etc., if they can look at pictures and click on links and videos pertaining to each event. Interactive timelines could also be of use in developing storyboards for films and television, as they provide an easy way to organize sequential information, and are more compact and less wasteful than paper. The military might use interactive timelines in developing attack strategies; forensic scientists could use timelines to organize data and visual information progressing from when a crime was committed to when the body was found. They might also be a useful feature in PowerPoint presentations; an interactive timeline would allow the audience to view a concise representation of the data before learning about the different components, and the presenter could easily pull up photos and links at any point in the presentation.