Data visualisation

http://www.wordle.net/

The data we’re constantly creating is growing exponentially. But unless we can make sense of this data, as consumers and businesses, what use is it? Data visualisation enables us to tell stories with information.

Wordle and IBM’s Many Eyes help users analyse online text through representing the frequency of words in terms of letter size. Social news site Digg graphically represents conversations about various topics through DiggSwarm to monitor the buzz.

http://labs.digg.com/swarm/

Microsoft's phenomenal Photosynth (now out of Beta) collates people’s digital photos to build a 3D model of locations around the world for anyone to explore. CNN created a Photosynth of the of the Inauguration of Barack Obama. They invited anyone to contribute simply by taking a digital photo and sending it to themoment@cnn.com. Photosynth software compiled the shots, creating a spectacular, hyper real reproduction of the scene.

Organisations collect vast amounts of research data, much of which is under-utilised. Visualisation tools can help them make better use of company data. Marketers can use word clouds to instantly get a snapshot of what consumers are saying about their brands. They can easily share data visualisations with other offices to collaborate more effectively.

Tracer, an Aegis proprietary tool, enables us to quickly spot trends and correlations in media and sales data over time. These can then be modeled.

I love playing around with visualisation tools, particularly as they have a social networking element. On Many Eyes, for example, users share and comment on others' visualisations, which generates new ideas.