Been meaning to write about this site for some time, just never got around to it. Take a look at this:
Just looking at the table doesn’t really do it justice, so I would urge you to visit the site. As you mouse over the chart, you get blown-up examples of each type of visualisation. The organisation has laudable aims and also provides a series of online courses; originally, I held off writing about this until I’d actually done one of the courses. And gradually that became a reason to procrastinate. So now I’m writing about it without actually having done any of the courses, in the belief that the chart alone is valuable enough to share.
[Yes, valuable enough to share. Why would you want to share valueless things? Welcome to the abundance economy. One that needs sensible decisions about copyright and intellectual property rather than the shambles we have today. One that begins to recognise what an extreme nonrival good is.]
Why am I sharing this? Because I believe that acquiring “literacy” in the use of visualisation tools and techniques is a Good Thing for all of us. Because I believe that somewhere out there, someone will augment the chart even further, and provide online tools that will help us create and produce the visualisations. Because I believe that over the next ten years, visualisation will grow significantly in importance, as people recognise the value of such tools and techniques in converting firehoses into capillaries.
Because I believe in sharing the things I like, the things I find useful, valuable.
Hey JP, I also liked the periodic table (great Sankey diagram sample). Finding it made me start collecting good visualization examples (and other catalogs of techniques) about a year ago. You might be interested in some of them I’ve come across: http://delicious.com/hepwori/Visualization?setcount=50
Thanks Isaac. This is where the web comes into its own, allowing people like you and me to discover overlapping interests we were otherwise unaware of, and being able to pool our knowledge simply.
will give you more warning next time, we must meet. and bring matt
That is just, cool.
Thanks, added this to my bookmarks! Some of the metaphor visualisation and compound visualisation areas are really off the wall, but something very like Mm was highly acceptable to my project sponsors a couple of years ago.
Great! I immediately sent it to my colleagues.
Thanks for sharing this. It’s a great tool. We’ve been working hard to use more visual techniques in our work and this is a great contribution.
Plus it’s fun so I’ll be putting the word out too. Go Web!
make sure you take a look at Isaac link as well – he has posted some great content
Craig, I agree. Great stuff from Isaac. I’m still going through his bookmarked items there. Couldn’t resist trying to classify some of the items in the context of the “periodic table” above. Interesting exercise.
Been meaning to write an appreciative comment for some time, just never got around to it.
But that’s a great picture – especially for someone like me with a genuine work need and a genuine non-work enthusiasm for data insight techniques. Thanks for the pointer.
thanks for the feedback, Rana. one of the strange things about the web is that it is littered with things that are extremely useful …. but only to the right people
JP, I think this is brilliant. I’ve been interested in visualisation tools for about 7 years now and have implemented 2 knowledge systems in my organisation using a hierarchical tree. Now looking for a new tool to help visualise networks if possible. Will take a much deeper look for some inspiration…
Salv
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html This goes on to show that the PowerPoint application is vastly inadequate. There is a need for a presentation software that lets you present in ANY of these many formats.
This is a great collection, JP. The world is getting more and more intricate, and people’s attention span shorter and shorter. I started a company eight years back on the basis that I could see Data Networks getting more and more complex, and more people needing a way to understand what a network was doing without becoming technical experts – hence, visualisation has been absolutely key for us. One of our ‘bibles’ has been Ed Tufte’s wonderful series of books (http://www.edwardtufte.com, for any readers who don’t know him) which, on top of being simple and enlightening, are beautifully printed and lovely to hold and leaf through.
Thanks for the link.
JP, thanks for the tweet and the offer of the materials. Looking forward to reading them. Also, I hope to meet you in person on the 8th June at the Connecting Business with Social Networking conference – I am one of the speakers there.
Salv