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Data Visualization
By audhill | August 8, 2007
One of the things that I’ve been most interested in is how information is graphically represented. Every year, our students have to do data collection (what’s your favorite ice cream, team, candy, etc.) and then represent that information as a graph. I’ve wondered ( and maybe 12 is too young, who knows?) whether we can introduce them to a variety of ways of representing information and have them come up with their own way to represent their data. We can evaluate them on their understanding of the content and on their successful representation of the data. They can deal with scale, color, shapes, line, movement, time, text, intensity.
Similarly, we can introduce them to information graphics that already exist and have them interpret data from very different tools. Of course, some of the data tools that we see now are clever toys rather than meaningful new ways to represent information, but I think some of the graphics we see now will eventually be considered standard tools.
Here’s an article in Smashing Magazine, with links to some of the more interesting new information graphics… well worth a look.
Topics: design |