Mitchell Whitelaw has a really intriguing post this week on the notion of combining data visualization with actual visceral exploration.
In the wake of the announcement from the UK Met Office that they will be making available data from more than 1000 globally-dispersed weather stations, Manuel Lima made something of a call to arms for the data and information visualization set:
This represents a great momentum for all of us involved in Visualization at large to be part of the solution and deliver a clear unequivocal view on what’s happening with our planet. Regardless of how you label your practice, Information Visualization, Data Visualization, Information Design, Visual Analytics, or Information Graphics, this is ultimately a call for everyone dealing with the communication of information for human reasoning. Let’s roll up our sleeves!
Mitchell proposes a response that incorporates a combination of local visualization with exploration of the mapped data:
Visualisation is great, but how else could we feel those changes, especially over time? One way would be to walk the data. We could make a kind of giant line graph, in the form of a path or road, then walk from 1850 to 2009. According to the Met Office’s graph – remixed above with a picture of my local landscape – this would be a fairly undulating journey, but the last half especially would be a distinct and noticeable climb. Building this path at a walkable scale seems like hard work though. It would be much easier to use the paths we already have.
An interesting extension of this idea would be a global catalog of these visualizations in combination with some manner of QR-enabled or augmented reality content on the walks themselves, giving people engaged in a walk of their own an insight into the data that corresponds to their current location and the people who have previously mapped (and loved) this same space.
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