Summer Thesis Thoughts: Version 3 – “Yes, yes…now that’s what I’m talkin’ about”

Scanned TED talks and speakers for a while Sunday and Monday and came across these tools and information through Jonathan Harris’s bio. Should be somewhat helpful when creating my prototypes:

• Original post on British news site Guardian focusing on the many benefits, uses, and breakthroughs of data viz: See how the information garden grows
• Another article: Uncovering global inequalities through innovative statistics focusing on how key information held in statistics unlocks the world we live in and gives us a better comprehension of data into ways that are instantly and easily understood.

1. I can create my own “interactive bubble-chart in form of a Gadget in Google Spreadsheet. Motion chart lets you create your own chart from data you have published on a Google Spreadsheet.”
2. Fidgt – pretty cool tool
   
3. Digg Labs has several tools for visualizing the ever-changing landscape of it’s community
4. Many Eyes offers “many” tools for visualizing any type of data in multiple formats

Also, a few key points from Chris Jordan’s TED presentation:

Picturing Excess

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/279

- b/c can’t make meaning out of enormous statistics take raw language of data and translate it into a visual language that can be felt

- if we can feel these issues more deeply than they’ll matter to us more than we do now, if we find that then we can find within ourselves the bigger question that is how do we change? that to me is the big question we face as a people, how do we each individually take one piece of the solution that we are in charge of and that is our behavior.

- dont have to make yourself bad by looking at these issues – this is who we are right now. is there are things we dont like about our culture than we have a choice.

- degree of integrity we each can bring to the surface, he depth of character we can summon as we change is already defining us as indivuals and a nation and will continue to do that as a people and it will affect those that will inherit our decisions
Coming to a realization that I’m looking too broad, reaching too high, and perhaps too hard for my exact niche focus. I know that I’m interested in patterns and meanings of social behaviors and epidemics, and bringing awareness to them through visualizations. Take a few days break from the advanced research and look at other student work, and take some time to do some mind mapping which should help break my mental wall.