OpenVisuals.org
Mehmet Sinan Ascioglu
Data and Visualization...
This is a two sided story..
http://www.openvisuals.org
Open Source Visualization Framework provides visualization artists a website, OpenVisuals.org, in which they can find interesting data sets to visualize, a visualization API to import the data shared on the website and to create a visualization on top of it. It also gathers these open source visualizations and data sets under one hood, making it possible to map them to each other on the fly, and enables the community to share, communicate, and collaborate on data visualization.
Background
Basic pie charts, scatter graphs, etc.. had been a good solution for the basic needs for data visualization, but with the recent high level of data production and variety, data producers are looking for different ways to visualize their data.
I have especially studied the two websites: Swivel.com and IBM Many Eyes project. These two websites provide the structure to gather datasets from users and visualize them within their own visualizations. My research on these websites made me focus on more artistic visualizations on my project, and make them available through creating a framework for them.
Audience
I have two sided audience groups. First one are people who like to see interesting datasets visualized and/or looking for visualization to use with their own datasets. The second group, which is my major focus group, are the visualization artists which find data visualization as a challenge to get value and meaning out of data. This framework especially focuses on them to provide them interesting datasets and tools to create visualization easily using a library in Processing (an open source programming environment).
User Scenario
A user comes to the website, browses various visualizations of data. Can either submit a new dataset and pick an already uploaded visualization. As a visualization artist, user can download the API to start using any of the datasets as a source for his visualization. Can see the source code of the visualizations on the website and comment on them.
Implementation
A website, including the visualizations and datasets uploaded by users.
An API library, which is to be used in Processing to make the datasets available to use in visualizations.
Conclusion
I have learned many things, especially regarding to the social behavior. To reply the great interest on having a Processing Flickr'ish sharing website, I come up with the sister website, OpenProcessing.org, which gathered a great interest and submission by the processing community.
Background
Basic pie charts, scatter graphs, etc.. had been a good solution for the basic needs for data visualization, but with the recent high level of data production and variety, data producers are looking for different ways to visualize their data.
I have especially studied the two websites: Swivel.com and IBM Many Eyes project. These two websites provide the structure to gather datasets from users and visualize them within their own visualizations. My research on these websites made me focus on more artistic visualizations on my project, and make them available through creating a framework for them.
Audience
I have two sided audience groups. First one are people who like to see interesting datasets visualized and/or looking for visualization to use with their own datasets. The second group, which is my major focus group, are the visualization artists which find data visualization as a challenge to get value and meaning out of data. This framework especially focuses on them to provide them interesting datasets and tools to create visualization easily using a library in Processing (an open source programming environment).
User Scenario
A user comes to the website, browses various visualizations of data. Can either submit a new dataset and pick an already uploaded visualization. As a visualization artist, user can download the API to start using any of the datasets as a source for his visualization. Can see the source code of the visualizations on the website and comment on them.
Implementation
A website, including the visualizations and datasets uploaded by users.
An API library, which is to be used in Processing to make the datasets available to use in visualizations.
Conclusion
I have learned many things, especially regarding to the social behavior. To reply the great interest on having a Processing Flickr'ish sharing website, I come up with the sister website, OpenProcessing.org, which gathered a great interest and submission by the processing community.