Visualization of Data

I've believed for a long time that the existing way of working with computers is archaic. The use of folders and nesting folders to store files was a good method in the beginning because of the limitations of technology. The display of these files/folders naturally came about as a graphical visualization of the exact same thing. Technology is leaping forward and is no longer so rigidly bound in it's display of information. Yet the majority of business still organizes it's information the same way and shows it in the same way. New technology is available to drastically improve the way information is handled in todays business world.

The Visualization of Data is a big topic in business right now. One of the hardest things, and often requires a large portion of training, is how to find information. Having all the information in the world doesn’t help you if you’re unable to find it. Common drawbacks to searching is the retrieval of too many results or too few. If you've ever done a general search on Google you know exactly what I mean. Usually this is a result of not concise enough search criteria but it can also be the poor organization of the data. That will be the subject of another post.

The first step is always the organization and gathering of information. Once that has been designed and accepted, the next most important step is the retrieval of that data. What fields to search on? What information to show? How will the user search? This step is often overlooked or downplayed in importance. The focus in business is often the entry of information more so than the retrieval of it. Slowly this is being turned around. The realization that a significant amount of time is wasted in the search for the relevant information is starting to take hold.

The concept of Data Visualization is starting to take a larger part in the stage of development, and with phenomenal results. Technology is at the point where information, once gathered, has a tremendous number of options in how it’s displayed. Depending on the requirements it can be displayed in many different ways. The first link below goes into greater detail and provides some of the same links I have. The method I am most in favor of is the use of a force-controlled graph. This is link 3.

Not only would this be a great search tool, requiring very little training, but it's also ideal in the visualization of the relationships between objects. It’s very intuitive and quite powerful, simply using the existing information and it’s OWN relationships, just displaying it in a different way.

Another interesting method is one being used by DIGG Labs (link 7). They arrange story links according to popularity, also modifying the size of the text. I've seen this in other places, used to highlight common tags with location and size determined by popularity (Flickr uses this in http://flickr.com/photos/tags/). This provides yet another method of visualizing data in a way that makes it easy and intuitive for users to find information. There's virtually little training required to start searching for you need.

By breaking out of the box entirely in regards to the display of information, the amount of time spent in finding information can be drastically reduced. By making the entire search process more natural, training can be reduced as well. Saving time equals saving money. Making it a little more fun never hurts either.

Links:
A description of new concepts:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

A graphical display of the links in websites (used before to map the chaos of links in an entire website)
http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm

* A visual force-controlled graph built around XML data *
http://www.fahrio.com/interactive/musicmap/

A tutorial on building the above in Ajax
http://www.ajax-tutorials.com/tutorial-list/resource/force_directed_graph_from_xml/

A graphical visualization of text in different essays.
http://www.munterbund.de/visualisierung_textaehnlichkeiten/essay.html

A site discussing the Esthetics of Displaying Information
http://www.infosthetics.com/

Arranging links (and sizing them) according to popularity
http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/?popular