3:30 am update

I thought I'd post a screenshot of what I have. This is displaying the schools, population density, and crime rates. I don't think I'll get to doing hospitals before tomorrow morning when it needs printed. The density took forever to finish. I'm going to start working on decreasing/increasing population now.

Hi Everyone,

Thought I would show some screenshots of progress so far.

Base layer design

Tried to add this last night, but sometimes Blogger won't let me post photos. More to come later.

Hey, I have made some big changes, I think this is going in a good direction. I decided to take the idea of height of a stack of $100 dollar bills and compare that to objects... the animation will demonstrate the change in scale.

Flash wireframe

Problems with scale

Hi Everyone,

Part of my goal is to show just how vast the differences in wealth between people (even among those we consider rich) can be.

Because the range is so vast and hard to get a grasp of, I tried comparing "your" salary with those of the rich and plotted it against time. Many of you did not really see the connection and suggested that I use objects or something more concrete or tangible. Things you can buy, etc.

What I keep bumping into is that the scale of these things is vast. I'm struggling in determining how to show things other than numbers but I don't think piles can convey that. Let me show you what I mean.


Here is a bar graph of most of my celebrities, as you can see, Oprah and George Lucas tower above the rest, and its hard to even tell the difference between some of the others (this is number of Bentley's they could buy in a year with their earnings)


And here is what happens when you add someone like Bill Gates:



The people who were towering before, George Lucas and Oprah become tiny, and everyone else drops off completely. So the problem is that I end up having to change the scale of the chart in order to see differences. Maybe I need to do some zooming? But I think the idea of showing piles of money or stacks of yachts just won't convey correctly? Anybody have any thoughts?

Jim

getting there...

I'm going to have to have a key I've decided. So here is what I've been thinking.

Design work

Here is a sketch of one "branch" of my food map. For the final piece, I plan on having five different "branches" representing a range of foods. Here you can get an idea of the design scheme and typography. The first picture shows all of the type I scanned in and vectorized using Illustrator.

I want to fade different colors into each other for each branch instead of just the branch. I have an idea of how to do it but haven't tried it yet.

Representation and color problems

I thought I'd upload what I've been working on because I've been running into a few problems and would love some feedback. My first problem is representation. So on the maps below, the peachish dots show population density, the brown overlay shows crime rates per neighborhood, and the pencils show elementary schools. My large representation problem is the schools. I want to differentiate between elementary, middle, high, and universities. Universities definitely can't be the same as an elementary school. So right now I have pencils and I don't like them at all. I'd like something a little less literal for this map. I was thinking about just different shapes but that would get into the idea of having to have a key. I also thought about using the tip of the pencil only for something maybe. I don't know.

The other big problem I have deals with colors. I can't get a color palette to work well. If I stick with colors that somewhat relate to the data I'm showing, they don't go well together. If I just choose colors that I like and I think look good together, it doesn't make sense.

So suggestions would be awesome.

Finally found a good way to represent time

Hi Everyone,

Well, I had lots of input from people here and from my HCI friends. I think I've finally hit on a something that will accurately show time and the scale I'm wanting to convey. Now, instead of it just showing you a number of years (which no one seemed to like) it moves you back in time. Famous dates fly past and a counter keeps track of the years, kind of like a time machine. What I like about this is that if physically shows the distance between you and the celebrity, and as they shrink on the horizon, one realizes just how far away their wealth places them from you.

I don't have a lot of inherent artistic ability, so these screenshots use icons that I found as a way of mocking things up. :)



I also worked on some sound design, and came up with this for the sound that happens once you press "Start Working".

Short Trip mp3
Long Trip mp3

The Right Representation

I admit that when I picked this topic, I already had at least a vague concept of how I want it to work. I am very much inspired by the work of Ben Fry (you can see some of it at his website at http://www.benfry.com/ in case you’re not familiar)—he is, in fact, the reason I decided to get a CS minor. I like the way in which he does information design by combining graphic design with programming skills, so that information that is constantly updated or changing can still be accommodated and made easier to process.

I wanted to do something similar, which is why I picked a topic with a lot of statistical data that, at least in theory, could be programmed to be updated as new data comes in. For this reason as well, my mental concept of how the finished product of this project should look is something along the lines of a dynamic chart or bar graph.

Because there is so much information, with levels of hierarchy where some information is more important, I want to give the user the option to add layers (or levels). I think the starting layer should be limited to just human population growth over time. Then, like adding layers of transparency paper, the user can add other layers and levels of information—more about population growth (for example, the birth rate), or information from the other 2 categories (environmental degradation and adoption rates). Some provisions will have to be made to accommodate the fact that some of this data will have different scales (for example, number of births vs. degrees of average global temperature increase), but the unifying factor would be time—for most of the data, I have been able to find at least approximations dating back to around 1900. So, it is quite possible to compare the data even across different scales.

I guess my biggest issue is not so much figuring out what to do next—I have at least a few ideas for that—but wondering whether I should’ve been exploring more options as to other, less graph-like representations of my data. That’s the one problem with coming into a project like this with more than just a vague idea of what you want to do and how you want to do it—it becomes harder to see and explore other options. That’s part of the reason why I haven’t posted as much recently; I’d been trying to take a step or two back from the project and see if taking a “mental break” would allow me to see some other possibilities for representing my data. But I guess I’ve come to accept the fact that this is the only solid representation I can foresee working for me and the nature of the information I am trying to display, and that at this point I just need to work on moving forward.

I have a few rough sketches of ideas, but my scanner is not cooperating. I’m going to try to start working more on the computer within the next few days, and I’ll post some of that work as I make more progress. For now, any suggestions or feedback so far would be very helpful.

Progress

Here are some images of my progress and ideas. The first image is giving an idea of population density in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. It is focused on "persons per square mile." The lighter the color, the less "persons per square mile." I may need a key for this, but I'm giving it a try without.



The second image shows if the population in Pittsburgh neighborhoods is increasing or decreasing. So far it is mostly decreasing. I'm wondering if I need the person on all of them or just here and there in the larger ones. That way it is less cluttered. So some would have person and arrow while smaller areas would only have an arrow.



The third image is combining the previous two.


There will also be an image showing schools, hospitals, etc and one for either crime or housing. The last image shown will be a combination of everything.

I am working in print so I thought maybe I could have a book and when it opens the back shows the Pittsburgh map and then there are overlays on each side that can be overlapped and interacted with. Because of the way it is set up (an overlay on all sides of the square) people can mix and match what information they want. There will also be an area with all of the neighborhood names somewhere. The sketch below shows my possible layout.

coming soon....

Hey guys. I just wanted to check in and let you know that I have not forgotten this class. I've been crazy busy, but I will have sketches up later today that show where I am headed. These will consist of different layers of information as well as how my print piece will interact.

Progress and Ideas

I also have an updated digital version of the tree but blogger isn't letting me upload anything else right now. These are sketches of my current idea for how to make this work as a print piece. Basically, you have the main "food tree" and then transparent overlays that you can combine where each overlay has the restrictions for an individual diet. I think this would allow the viewer to make connections between different diets.

working on scale

I decided to pick a bunch of interesting points from human history and use them on a timeline to help get a sense of scale. Then I plotted them all on a chart to get an idea of just how big I needed to make things. Wow, Bill Gates make a LOT of money. (minimum wage would take you 300,000 years. Attached are pics of the spreadsheet and the chart I cut out and tried to fiddle with ways of how to display this info. 

mockups and sketches

I'm going to repost the celebrity mockup I did earlier for feedback, I've also been pursuing a very abstract version of the disparity of wealth in the US. 

For the disparity example, I've tried not to use any words, though it seems like it may need some explanation. The large circle at the top shows the amount of wealth that the top 10% owns. The smaller circle beneath it shows the amount of wealth that the bottom 90% owns. In an earlier version of this (not posted) I had computed the area of the circles based on their diameter - which I think was wrong - the example posted uses the area of a circle, which I think is more accurate. (I was getting just giant disparities before) 

I've also been inspired by all of the bank failures in the news lately, and have done some pencil sketches of the "faces of welfare," comparing the bailout of people normally associated with welfare and CEO's of failed lending institutions that now need the government's help.

A few new sketches

Hey guys. I don't have a lot done but I have some and I'm still working. Here are a few new sketches just to show employment. I'm still working on a couple. The idea is that I can use these as icons overtop of some other map. I'm thinking that I'd rather have people though. So hopefully soon I can work on icons with people doing the particular job. That seems more emotional and personable to me.

I've printed out a map with Pittsburgh topography. I'm hoping to layer other elements over this (such as employment and population). Still working on this aspect.

I'm still struggling with making this a more emotional piece.

Anyways, here are a few of the icon sketches I started, but they will definitely change as I want the person in with them.




Here are images of the maps that I'm referring to. I plan on doing my own map with a different take on elevation.

A non-scientific classification of the American kitchen

edit===================================

Here's a quick sketch of the one "branch" of the tree, seen in the context of two different diets. A few things I am running into are that I can't fit all of the names of the food into the tree two dimensionally-- I'm considering trying to create depth in the tree, although this would work better in a digital format so you could move around and see the tree from different angles.

I'm also wondering how I can represent all of this information for each diet at the same time- so that the viewer can the mapping of two or more diets at the same time and see what foods overlap or what parts of the "tree" tend to be more safe overall.

===============================================

Here is a quick (well, messy, but not quick) sketch of the idea I had to classify food. I want to use color to denote the "safeness" of each food for different diets, but I haven't put together examples yet. I have a few ideas, but for now here is this piece- see what you think.

FYI, I think I'm going have this piece be a bit tongue-in-cheek, as you might be able to tell.

Sketches

Here are some initial sketches for population, housing, and employment and occupation. I haven't ordered them from abstract to literal yet.

Some symbols

Here's a start on some icons representing different diets. I kept running into problems because the things I'm representing are pretty broad topics, and it's hard not to narrow them down too much.

I'll try to work on some more interesting ideas in the coming days.

edit--------------------

I found this website that I might collect some data from, even though it's a little late. Basically it has nutrition information for 13,000 foods (it's off of the USDA website). I found the "key" they provided to explain the food codes- it has a fairly complete list of all types of foods that I could work from as well. It's pretty cool anyway if anyone wants to check it out.

http://199.133.10.140/codesearchwebapp/(mqh4bfv4ghhohu55ikx5erny)/codesearch.aspx

Pics from abstract to Literal

Attached are various pics I've done mapping concepts from abstract to literal:

Haves vs. Have Nots



Annual Income



Gross Domestic Product



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Sounds -

1. Descending bells I recorded... could represent either depth or weight
Bells

2. Coins - these are sound of coins I recorded: 1 coin falling onto table, coin into a cup, lots of coins falling onto table, lots of coins into a cup.

Coins

I'm Late!

My apologies for the delay. Because of Senate's big orientation event yesterday and the preparation that I had to do for that, I'm a couple of days behind on all my work as well as exhausted. Hopefully I can catch up on everything soon, though...

Anyway, here's my data organizing:

Population/Birth Rate
Change in total world population over time (time)
Birth rate/number of babies born annually (time)
Number of people who die annually, for comparison (time)
Regions of the world with the highest birth rates (location, category)

Adoption Statistics
Birth rate/number of babies born annually (time)
Number of children adopted annually (time)
Number of children put up for adoption annually (time)
Estimated number of children abandoned/orphaned annually (time)
Regions of the world with highest number of children abandoned/orphaned (location, category)

Environmental Changes
Increase in air pollution (time)
Number of trees cut down to create more living space (time)
Increase in average global temperature (time)
Regions of the world with the highest increases in these factors (location, category)

And here's what I'm thinking in terms of visual map:


Basically, I'm thinking that my representation should include two modes, one to organize data by time (like a graph) and one by world regions (like a map), so you get both an overall idea of the increase of the statistics, and a sense of which parts of the world they are affecting the most.

Pittsburgh Neighborhood Information

Part 1:
My three of interest include population, employment & occupation, housing

Part 2 (LATCH):
Population
Location: Pittsburgh overall, Pittsburgh neighborhoods individually
Category: age, race, employment status
Hierarchy: population by age (highest to lowest), population by location (highest to lowest)

Employment & occupation
Location: Pittsburgh overall, Pittsburgh neighborhoods individually
Category: gender, occupation, employed vs. unemployed
Hierarchy: most/least employed by location

Housing
Location: Pittsburgh overall, Pittsburgh neighborhoods individually
Category: type of household, household size, age of owner/renter
Hierarchy: most/least housing by type, size & householder

Part 3 (temporal map):


Part 4 (groupings):
(working on now)


Source of information

Data

Here's the data I collected about foods and special diets. I may add to the food list as I discover more foods that are common and diversify the information set.

Sorry about the crappy screencaps! (Click on them and they'll get bigger)

LATCH:

Location— Make a "map" of common foods according to type

Alphabetical— List foods and/or diets alphabetically

Time— Ability to display different diet sets at the same time or at different times

Category— Types of diets/types of foods.

Hierarchy— Grouping foods by type, closer together meaning more closely related (e.g. grouping all fruits together but then grouping all citrus fruits more closely)

Wealth Disparity Data - idea 1

Below are stats for the celebrity-to-you wealth comparison. There actually aren't that many stats because most of the interaction of the data will be happening through a simple formula.

Their annual salary/your annual salary = number of years you would have to work

Comparisons will be done with:
Your salary (or any salary you decide to type in)
Time, measured in years, and potentially with a significant historical event to add some flavor.
Annual Income of celebrities.

As this is kind of an exploratory "fun" interactive, I think I am not going to categorize the celebrities outright... granted there are some implied categories, politicians, moguls, etc, but I'm not sure that it's important to emphasize these. Additionally, if I were to add a wealth hierarchy, that would take away some of the "fun" of discovering how rich people really are as you use the interactive.



I sourced these through Businessweek, CNN and the Harvard Business School

Implementation
So I know that this is jumping ahead, but I actually got on a roll with this the other night and mocked up a way that this could be implemented:


The overall goal here was to compare earnings of people we all know with our own personal scale - in this case working for an entire year. The crazy thing is, even if you make $150,ooo a year, you would still have to work almost 28,000 years to make what Bill Gates does in 1.

Overpopulation - Effects & Solutions

Much of this isn't new, but this is the "official", cleaned-up version of my project proposal.

---

I think everyone is well aware of the steep increase in the world’s population. I can still remember the big hype surrounding the birth of the world’s 6 billionth baby, and now we’re up to around 6.8 billion already. These statistics are simply mind-blowing.

The Problem At Hand
Researchers from a variety of disciplines have suggested that many of the problems we are facing today, such as pollution, natural resource depletion and global climate change, can be directly linked to this sharp population increase. But if this is the case, then people’s efforts seem to have been primarily going toward trying to eliminate the detrimental effects, rather than trying to attack the problem at its source. Even if we somehow manage to reduce pollution, develop alternative energy sources, and halt climate change, in the end, we haven’t really accomplished anything until we’ve tackled the true issue, which is our rapidly-increasing population.

Context & Audience Affected
Since the issues described above affect us on a global scale, it can be argued that the audience consists of everyone everywhere in the world. However, since the scope of the problem itself is huge and such a large audience has varying needs and interests, I intend to narrow my focus somewhat. The people I am most interested in targeting are those who, in my opinion, have the best opportunity to do something about it: people in the developed world who are able to and possibly considering having children.

It is my personal opinion that people are having too many babies—not just in places like Africa, where birth control is limited, but even in the U.S., where people have technology on their side and it is more socially acceptable for women to make various choices on their own with regard to pregnancy. To solve the problem of our rapidly growing world population, I don’t think that bringing birth control and sex education to Africa and the rest of the Third World is enough. I think a complete change in people’s mindsets is in order. I’m not saying that people should stop giving birth entirely, but I don’t understand why adoption isn’t more widespread than it is.

Goals & Opportunities
My goal is not to preach to my audience, but to present them with three different data sets (world population growth statistics and birth rates, adoption rates, and some generalized facts about environmental changes) and hope that this presentation of the issue will encourage people to think about it in a way they haven’t before—that we are rapidly overpopulating the earth, and that adoption is one of the best solutions.

Project Approach
Since most of this information can be represented through numerical statistics that are constantly changing, I imagine the representation taking the form of an interactive chart or graph on a computerized device. In order to avoid information overload, the data might be presented in layers, where the user, through a menu of sorts, can gradually add more data to the graph as desired. In this way, the user can not only compare all three data sets at once, but also compare one data set in isolation (for example, population growth), as well as two out of the three data sets (such as population growth vs. adoption statistics).

Wealth Disparity Proposal

JD Vogt
Topic proposal for Information Interaction Fall - 08.

Wealth Disparity

What is the current problem and why is it important?
I'd like to tackle the issue of wealth disparity either in the US or the World. I've read various articles over the years and have seen charts that show the distribution of the "have's" vs. the "have nots." Literature has shown that the vast majority of wealth in the US is tied up in a very small segment of the population. My sense is that this leads to an increasingly undemocratic society.

There are plenty of charts and statistics that show the disparity of wealth among our population, but I'd like to humanize it a bit more. If I can show a distinct disparity between us as individuals… perhaps it will have a different impact. Or if I can better visually show the disparity in terms of overall mass between the various groups, and particularly how it has changed over time.


To whom is it important?
Wealth is something that affects all of us, not only our individual lives, but our culture as well. We idolize the rich and want to be like them. My audience would be those who have an interest in not only their own wealth, but those who are interested in doing something about the inequality that exists, hopefully policy makers.

In what context is it important?
I believe that while we sometimes see these sort of statistics, and may know that some people are very, very rich, that it's hard to get one's head around exactly what that sort of wealth means. For instance, if I can afford 1/4 of a Lamborghini, how many can Steve Jobs afford?

What do you want to achieve and what opportunities exist?
I'd like to bring awareness of how the wealthy dominate our economy, laws and culture and use their wealth to maintain their position. I should state that I have nothing against people achieving wealth. However, I am concerned with so much capital being tied up in the hands of so few. Particularly when some of those few break or change the rules as it suits them. This has a "cheating" effect on our society - where we look up to people whose actions can be ethically questionable. (Good for me, but not for thee) I found this article particularly telling of the disparity that exists.

Today the top 1% of households receives more pretax income than the bottom 40%. And the distribution of wealth is even more lopsided. The top 1% of households owns nearly 40% of total household wealth -- more than the bottom 90% of households combined -- and earns half of all capital income. Income and wealth are more unevenly distributed among Americans than at any time since the Jazz Age of the 1920s. On measures of income and wealth inequality, the U.S. tops the charts among the advanced industrial nations. BusinessWeek Nov. 1, 2004

Approach
I've sketched a number of ideas to demonstrate how this would work out. Some are more whimsical than others. Ideas have ranged from:

• Comparing your own wealth to those of the rich and famous. For instance, how many years would you have to work for 1 day's pay compared to Oprah or Bill Gates. You type in your annual income and choose a person to compare yourself to. Could also include those much less fortunate for comparison purposes.
• Graphically showing the magnitude and mass of wealth that belongs to the top 10-1% compared to the population as a whole. Use sliders to show how those values have changed in the last 50 years.
• Create "giant heads" (with tiny bodies) in a sort of police line-up of various industry moguls where the size of their heads reflect the volume of their net worth.
• A globe where the major geographical areas of the world (North America for instance) change as a percentage of global size based on buttons pressed such as World Population, Net Worth, and GDP.

Project Proposal

Over the last year or two I have become increasingly aware of the complex array of diets that people restrict themselves to, either because of allergies or due to a specific set of beliefs. This topic began to interest me as I started taking vegetarianism seriously, while at the same time discovering and dealing with an assortment of allergies. I also noticed the crossovers of foods that I can eat as well as my other friends who have other allergy or otherwise restricted diets.

Despite the fact that food companies are required to print a warning below the ingredients list if a food contains any of the eight most common allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat), this step does not solve the problem completely. Many problem ingredients can be hidden in foods under confusing chemical names. Also, there are people that have more uncommon, yet still serious allergies which are not required to be listed in ingredients.

I'd like to demonstrate the crossovers in these diets by first representing a typical American diet by looking at all the food in my own and other people's kitchens. I plan to organize this food by type and then show which foods fit into which diets. Diets I am considering representing include kosher, halal, vegan, vegetarian, peanut allergy, gluten allergy, dairy-free, as well as my own diet.

The audience for this piece would be anyone who is attempting to navigate the confusing landscape of foods while maintaining one or more specific diets. I also would like this piece to serve as an illustration to show how limited some people must be in their food choices, it being a matter of life or death for some. Ideally, I'd like to see this piece take a digital form so that a user could select as many allergies or diet tracts that they may follow and be shown a guide to "safe" foods for them.

Proposal Draft 1

Here is my first stab at the project propsal. Still a very broad topic.



Also, here is the information I've found.

World Population Growth and Adoption

My apologies for my tardiness. I've had an idea in mind since class met on Tuesday, and one that I am actually quite passionate about, but it took me a while to really mold it into a concrete topic and then do the necessary footwork to see if it's worth pursuing. I spent quite a bit of time in the library over the weekend trying to figure out if this has been done before. Though I'm certainly not the first to research this, visual representations seem to be lacking, so I do get the impression that my topic might be worth giving a shot.

The idea that came to mind almost instantly when I heard about the project has to do with global population growth. It is my personal opinion that people are having too many babies--not just in places like Africa, where birth control is limited, but even in the U.S., where people have technology on their side and it is more socially acceptable for women to make various choices on their own with regard to pregnancy. At any rate, I think everyone is well aware of the steep increase in the world's population. I can still remember the big hype surrounding the birth of the world's 6 billionth baby, and now we're up to around 6.8 billion already. These statistics are simply mind-blowing.

Researchers from a variety of disciplines have suggested that many of the problems we are facing today, such as pollution, natural research depletion and global climate change, can be directly linked to this sharp population increase. But if this is the case, then people's efforts seem to have been primarily going toward trying to eliminate the detrimental effects, rather than trying to attack the problem at its source. Even if we somehow manage to reduce pollution, develop alternative energy sources, and halt climate change, in the end, we haven't really accomplished anything until we've tackled the true issue, which is our rapidly-increasing population.

I don't think that bringing birth control and sex education to Africa and the rest of the Third World is enough. I think a complete change in people's mindsets is in order. Again, this is my personal opinion, but I don't understand why people in the developed world are still clinging onto this mindset that they absolutely have to have babies. I'm not saying that people should stop giving birth entirely, but I don't understand why adoption isn't more widespread than it is. I feel like it would solve a lot of our problems, and people still get to experience the joy of raising a child.

Anyway, personal rants and opinions aside, I think that there is definitely something of interest to be gained by meshing these three data sets (population growth/birth rate, adoption statistics, and a little bit of statistical data about general environmental problems and changes). The only thing I wasn't sure about is whether this would make my information seem inherently biased--because I realize that I would, even by simply presenting facts about adoption rates, seem to be encouraging adoption. For that reason, I briefly considered leaving adoption out of the equation and making my project just about population growth vs. environmental effects, hoping that people will make the connection on their own that perhaps they should have fewer babies, but I feel like that's less interesting (and, you could argue, still somewhat inherently biased). I don't feel like I'm preaching, just providing my own spin on the interpretation of this data, so if I have a choice, I'd like adoption to remain a part of the focus.

What do other people think? Would it be problematic for me to present a slightly controversial set of data in an arguably slightly biased manner? The project outline didn't really specify that we're required to remain objective, so I had a hard time figuring out whether this is an acceptable topic or not.

Thoughts

The idea I have concerns word frequency in band names compared to musical genre. I'd like to represent the commonalities of words in the names of bands, perhaps by referencing the "word clouds" often used in blogs ranking word frequency (http://wordle.net). I thought that I could represent a spectrum of modern musical genres that relate to each other and place band names in groups according to common words.

The only problem with this idea is that I'm not quite sure how to gather all the information; I'm continuing to look but wanted to post my idea now. I've been playing with lyrics databases (www.sing365.com is a good one) and I can at least get numbers of artists including certain words from this website.

I found this visualization that pertains to word commonalities and other factors in books of essay compilations. It's pretty but I'm still trying to decipher it:

http://www.munterbund.de/visualisierung_textaehnlichkeiten/essay.html

-Caryn

Rough Ideas

I'm trying to tie this project in with my thesis, which is developing a wayfinding system in Oakland that also contributes to building communities or social belonging. Oakland is a rich area for this because of the museums, schools, hospital, etc. Many diverse people live and visit here. So some of my initial thoughts included tracking museum visits, tracking ethnic and cultural changes in Oakland, tracking the amount of people in Pittsburgh yearly or seasonally (seeing as how many leave for summers), and tracking Pittsburgh's use of public transport, people walking and people driving.

I have not yet looked to see if there are visualizations for any of this or information to use. I'm thinking the last idea (public transport vs walking vs driving) would supply the best information and would be useful to my thesis because there are many ways to find your destination and it would be great to see what people in Pittsburgh use most and how that would play a role in my wayfinding design.

Any comments or suggestions?

– Kara

Wealth Disparity

Hi all,

I'm interested in the differences between the haves and the have nots. Wealth is power, and I'd like to visually show the disparity between the small "mass" of those who have a lot vs the "masses" who have little. So somehow, perhaps with sliders, I'd like to show relationships of how this has changed over time. Ideas for data could be things like executive salaries compared to min. wage, percentage of the country's wealth tied up in companies vs. the population, number of jobs held by an individual based on their income.

A couple of links I've found so far are:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-08-16-income-disparity_x.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7180618

There are a number of various charts and graphs that demonstrate this... I'd like to make them more visually arresting, or to be able to show the difference over time.

Possible direction for my content

Hi team,

I figured I would get our blog started with just a rough direction that I am thinking about. I would like to make visualizations regarding the growth of Wikipedia, and the evolution of particular articles. As probably the largest general wiki encyclopedia, I find it amazing how active and committed members (or "Wikipedians") are with editing and adding to the knowledge. Apparently just 0.07% of members are responsible for at least 50% of the editing.

Wikipedia has all sorts of statistics about their site usage (http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm) that will probably form the basis of my content. I'm not completely sure what specific directions I would take this, but does this sound like a good and feasible idea?

I know there are some Wikipedia visualizations out there that attempt to semantically show the structure and relationships of the articles (http://scimaps.org/maps/wikipedia/20080103/, http://abeautifulwww.com/2007/05/20/visualizing-the-power-struggle-in-wikipedia/, http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/clusterball/index.html). However, I didn't find any that show the growth of articles and how they change over time. That would be my primary focus. Do you guys know of any visualizations that exist that consider time?

Any thoughts, critiques, suggestions welcomed. :-D Thanks!

[EDIT]: I figured I should include my other idea for content, hoping to receive feedback on what would be more interesting between the two. So, I am also considering making visualizations tracking the life of US currency. This idea comes from the notion of the website http://www.wheresgeorge.com/, where people can enter the serial code of dollar bills, and you can see where that bill travels. I think it would be really interesting to see how long dollar bills are left in circulation from the time of printing before they are destroyed for being too worn out. I'm not sure where I could get data on that though (if you have an idea, let me know).

So, although I am interested in this currency idea, I am less confident on being able to get enough content. I already have a lot of data for the wikipedia idea. I am still thinking this out, so any thoughts are appreciated. [/EDIT]


-Allison

Welcome!

Based on what we discussed in class this evening, what are you proposing to use as content for the project? What problem(s) have you identified and why is the topic important? To whom is it important and in what context? What opportunities have you identified?