#CASEprog Data Engagement:Visualisation Tools

Tony HirstDept of Communication & Systems

The Open University

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/1318351.pdf

From: DCLG DataViz Report

From: DCLG DataViz Report

http://www.improving-visualisation.org/

My Assumptions

• Your end users are developing policy• You have data that might help

• There are case histories available demonstrating how visualisation techniques can help make sense of data in a way that relates to policy questions

The goal?- to provide access to visualisation techniques to promote your data and provide a way for end users to engage with it

“…there’s a false expectation that visualising data is easy. The JFDI attitude prevalent in other areas of digital tools for local government may have created false expectations on ease of access to visualisation.”

“Cut-and-paste” chart templates

IBM Many Eyes

Embeddable

Interactive

Embeddable

Interactive

Google Fusion Tablepowered maps

Timemaps

“Data Liberation”

(Data as such…)

Let the data flow

“Import [ ] from URL”

Excel/XLSCSVGoogle Spreadsheet

Let the data flow…

Google Refine

(Data Cleansing in Google Refine)

Not quite ready yet…

Wizard for creating Google spreadsheet powered databases

Online interface to R/ggplot2

ggplot2

ggplot() + geom_linerange(data = d1,aes(x= car, ymin = ymin,ymax = ymax)) + geom_point(data = d2,aes(x= car, y= value,shape = variable),size = 2) + opts(title="F1 2011 Korea \nRace Summary Chart", axis.text.x=theme_text(angle=-90, hjust=0)) + labs(x = NULL, y = "Position", shape = "")

Writing Diagrams

[ Rstudio ]

[ Rstudio ]

Google Visualisation API/Chart Tools

Scraper

View

An in-browserdata context

d3.js

3.5 distinctions

Exploratory VisualisationVs.

Presentation Graphics

Data sketches &

Macroscopes

1.

Data Sketches:

communicate enough to

help you explore ‘interestingness’

(and see a way to

communicating better)

“Infographic generators”

FIVE elementary

data manipulations

sortfilter

facetgroup

by/aggregatejoin/merge

2.

SORT

FACET

FILTER

Google Visualisation API/Chart Tool Components

Filter

Sort

Google Fusion Tables – Aggregate View

Nested Group-By Optional grouping calculations

Group by Hierarchy inside

Datasets

Datasets

Data Views

Data Views

Data Renderings

Data RenderingsDataRepresentation

DataFormat

Data Shape & Structure 3.

3.5

Platonic solids

3.

data+Viz principles

-Tabular data-(Geo)spatial data-Temporal data-Network data-Hierarachical data

+Orderings and relations

Bertin’s Visu

al Variables

ANY QUESTIONS???

Tony Hirst@psychemediablog.ouseful.info