Idea Conference: Recap 3

by KEVIN SILVER :: JAN 3, 2007 :: COMMENTS (0)

Idea Conference Day 2

First up was Fernanda Viegas from IBM and Mike Migurski from Stamen Design talking about "Information Visualization: Why Now and Where It's Going." Fernanda and Mike each gave short presentations on their respective projects before answering questions from the audience.

Mike and his colleague, Erik Rodenbeck talked about a few projects directly related to visualizing information. Continuing with the overall theme of mapping data, Mike and Erik talked about two projects they worked on for MoveOn.org and Cabspotting. The MoveOn.org project dealt with putting their Virtual Town Hall’s online and making it highly interactive. They mapped participation in the Virtual Town Hall over time using “Curby Dots” which denoted the number of participants at a particular location through size of the dot. One really cool thing they did was to overlay a pie-chart on the dots to indicate responses to survey questions asked during the town hall. The next project they shared was Cabspotting, a project they worked on in conjunction with the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The project traced Yellow Cab’s cabs via GPS technology already used by the cabs. Using this data they mapped the cabs’ travels using white lines which allow you to discern the basic geography of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. Mike and Erik also talked about a project they did for Digg labs, in which they visualized realtime activity on Digg as a users “Digg” a story. They also looked at swarms, behavior in which as a story is “Dug” others immediately start “Digging” it.

Fernanda talked about a project she’s working on at IBM: Democratizing Visualization. She started out stating that most data visualizations are built by experts for experts. To lay the ground work for IBM’s Societal Intelligence project, Fernanda talked about the difference of visualizing private data such as email archives to public data such as baby names. She also showed us how the red/blue state metaphor of the 2004 election is skewed. When you look the information at the county level and then shade it accordingly to percentage a totally different picture is painted. Fernanda used this example to point out the importance of public discourse, distributed data analysis, collaborative sense making, and maybe a new form of interaction and participation. The Societal Intelligence project allows web users to create their own visualizations using data-sets provided by the site or data-sets they upload, thereby analyzing private or public data in a public manner that would allow open discourse and sense making.

Dan Hill: The New Media

Dan Hill from the BBC presented next on the new media, which is different from the old big media experience. Brand and content are increasingly out of control; Dan noted an example from Iraq in which the name of a BBC DJ painted on the side of a tank. He thinks the new strategy is “Attention”, how do you deal with an explosion of choice. Dan cleverly weaved through three tentative metaphors (“A history of participation in music”, “Architecture/Urban Planning”, and “Contemporary Composition”) before explaining how he has designed for “Attention”. A few main themes that came out of the metaphors were: ripples, vernacular architecture, fantasies and follies. Dan thinks of the web as a canvas. He went on to describe the One Big Weekend event spatially. He mapped out all points of dissemination, including a Second Life live broadcast and the ripples around the whole event. The ripples included flickr uploads, You Tube videos, Wikipedia entries, etc... The event had massive reach throughout the internet. A lot of it has to do with participation in the overall experience and Dan names four values of participation:

1. An individual should get value from their contribution to our participative system.
2. These contributions should provide value to other people as well.
3. The organization should get value out of it and expose this value back to the individuals, in the form of navigation systems and participative content. This creates an intermediate space between the users and the organization -- a call and response between broadcast and audience, interactive events and users, top-down and bottom-up, push vs. pull -- of benefit to both.
4. It exists both on the site, and in the wider web. If we can expose this as much as we can -- via the site, syndicate active content and APIS -- the internet itself should also get value from thee contributions and from the structure that supports them.

Next generation Libraries

Next up was a panel on Next Generation Libraries with Deborah Jacobs, Paul Gould, and Ed Vielmetti. Paul Gould of MAYA talked about their project with redesigning Carnegie Library System in Pittsburgh. He talked about how libraries have unique social roles within the community. He talked a lot about environments/spaces as an interface, he used a walkthrough of a hospital as an example. Paul talked in length about MAYA’s process and approach to this project. Ed Vielmetti talked about his effort as a Super Patron of the Ann Arbor Library system. He’s a member of the library's Technology Advisory Board and works closely with them to promote technology within the library system and on the web. He also blogs about his efforts. Ed also mentioned Book Burro, a Firefox plugin that when it senses you’re viewing a book, it will look up and find the cheapest prices for that book and even find the book in your local library if that information is available. Ed’s big message is to use your library and participate. Deborah Jacobs from the Seattle Public Library system talked about building the new main (downtown) branch of the library -- the building in which the conference was held. She talked about reclaiming the libraries role as a vital civic center center of culture and education. They wanted to design something beyond a “dumb-box”. The architecture firm conducted intensive research on how libraries are used. They wanted the library to be transparent -- people from outside the library should be able to see books -- which is why the building is built out of glass.

Robert Kalin: O Advantageous Interfaces!

Robert Kalin from Etsy, presented next and talked about: “O Advantageous Interfaces!” Robert started out by talking about physical objects as interfaces everything from chairs to toilets. He pointed out that consuming tobacco typically requires an interface such as a pipe. Robert continued to state. “Don’t think kitchens, think cooking.” In essence, don’t think about the object but the activity. Robert also questioned Linda Stone’s Continuos Partial Attention premiss, by comparing it to chewing bubble gum -- maybe we’re just are bored. He showed us a graph that showed bubble gum purchases decreased as Blackberry purchases increased. The Blackberry has replaced bubble gum as a way to pass time. Robert then talked about the Etsy project, it’s history and where it’s going. He wrapped up by telling us to use the UI to help distinguish who you are and your brand.

To wrap up the conference Bruce Sterling author of Shaping Things gave a rousing recap of the conference, a proclamation and challenge that you just have to listen to: http://ideaconference.org/2006/audio/22%20Bruce%20Sterling%20-%20Closing%20Keynote.mp3 . Be sure to listen carefully to his words to catch playful gems such as “wetland of the bog of semantics” or “You don’t get famous be achieving entire success!”

You can find all of the slides and some mp3's from the presentations here.

You can learn more about the speakers here.

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