Storytelling is a powerful tool to manage complexity. This is because you can attach pieces of unfamiliar information to a structure that is familiar to your audience. For the effect to work, then, it should be clear that you actually need to study what kind of narrative structures allow for embedding of information, and which kind of narrative among those structures is one that your audience gets. There is good reason for a canonical systematicity of narrative structures, but be aware that such systems need not transfer across all audiences alike.

Anyway, I just meant to drop you a few words of wisdom my Grandfather gave me:

Use proper tools!

Ironically Gramps did not have the proper tools for video recording, but then again, how else would his grandkids learn proper shaving technique?

(Source: vimeo.com)

If you are like me and enjoy the occasional in-depth confrontation with the theoretical underpinnings of communication on the web you may have come across the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication1 before. If not, perhaps this paper leaning in on intercultural communication on the web from the most recent issue may wet your appetite.

  1. Which thankfully is open access, unlike many other scientific sources, still. No paywall for you to dread. ↩

A Multimodal Framework for Analyzing Websites as Cultural Expressions

I’d like to present you with a thoroughly enjoyable article that may serve as a reminder why communication is a founding principle1 in design that goes beyond semiotic tokens. This is all the more true for user experience design, where interaction between a user and a machine has some of the very properties humans look for when they communicate with each other.

As a side note: Being a semanticist myself I find it pleasantly surprising how often Lakoff is mentioned in UX design circles, deservedly so, I should say. However, his seminal work is decades old by now and more contemporary insights from cognitive science have yet to find their way into UX design. Grice’s work is older still and if you are looking for more advanced methodical applications of his theoretic underpinnings, perhaps Relevance Theory is an avenue you may wish to pursue.

Seriously. There is lots of stuff that has evolved from what Grice introduced (beyond Relevance Theory). Lots of it is much more apt to describe and analyze communicative phenomena. Especially when it comes to interaction with computers, that just so happen to fail to qualify as a communication partner because they lack, in Grice’s terms, the capacity to act as intentional agents under the cooperative principle.

Still, read the article and make up your minds. Especially, if the concepts I threw around here are alien to you.

  1. The details of which I’ll save for some later posts. Suffice it to say that there are two systems of communication, a semiotic and a co-constructivist system. The latter is not one in which a computer may partake in communication, but it may well serve as a mediating proxy for communication with the creator of a program. ↩

UX Magazine: UX Design as a Two-Way Conversation

For everything that is right about this stunning blend of visualization techniques I cannot look past the glaring cock up of not labeling the axes properly.

Still, there is so much to learn from bringing together different approaches to visualization. In this video we have innovative mapping techniques1 that by themselves blur the boundary between photography (or cinematography in this case) and data visualization. We have layers of information that work in unison to convey an overarching theme. Quantitative information of accumulation over time is superimposed on the mapping visualization. We have a narrative structure provided by the voiceover that brings yet another stream of data to the piece.

The next step in the evolution of visualization as I see it would be to make the choices that seem artistically motivated and somewhat arbitrary in this video a matter of conscious translation from raw data into accessible representations of complex knowledge structures. We have yet to find a robust methodical solution to the question just how much information may be simultaneously conveyed through the visual and the acoustic channel. Furthermore we need to establish which kind of data should be directed where, when we are trying to create rich visualizations. As ever, we are faced with fighting complexity.

I find this video quite reminiscent of the kinds of solutions that augmented reality affords us with when trying to overlay information inputs. Referring back to the fine line between photography and data visualization, we will need to reassess our ideas about visualization when our tools start mimicking reality in the way they present us data about it2.

  1. The author of the original rendering of the globe that went into the video did various map experiments to illustrate the Anthropocene, showing several features of our global civilization: cities, built environment, transmission lines, pipelines, main paved and unpaved roads and railways. http://vimeo.com/27891029 ↩

  2. To make no mention of how to incorporate narrative structures as meaningful elements into visualizations. That topic is even more imminent and warrants some in depth consideration. Hopefully I’ll get around to it soon. ↩

In case you were wondering about my prolonged absence, I prepared a video to illustrate the events that kept me from posting. I kid you not, what transpires in the video is only ever so slightly exaggerated for narrative effect. There really were calls the moment I hit the upload button for deliverables, there were airplanes and ridiculous races against the clock.

As of now I am due for some down time, which on the upside to you my dear readers should result in the occasional output at your benefit. I have a couple of ideas I meant to pursue for some time and may finally get around to do that. 1

Anyway, now you know a bit more about what I do among my many explorations in communication. Some of my clients may recognize I repurposed stuff that was originally in their presentations. Once again, the video is all Keynote, as I was doing presentation consultancy and design this time. Refer to this video if you ever consider my approach to presentation design. And then consider giving me a bit more time for proper planning and getting you involved in the design process.

And finally, to leave you with a few insights from my work:

The first thing about productivity and efficiency I came to appreciate from recent experience is the way mobile computing allows for breakneck workflows that simply weren’t possible just a few years ago. Then again, if we are honest about it, such workflows aren’t fully sustainable even today. For one, bandwidth is still a limiting factor. Human health is another. 20h work shifts and time zone differences will take their toll on you.

The second thing I’d like to leave you with is how much I enjoy the benefits of the walled garden Apple affords me: I often screencasted the progress I made using Quicktime recording and exported those for mobile use. This only took very few minutes out of the precious time on the projects. I can only recommend using video for progress reports and milestone deliverables, for various reasons that may warrant a blog post of their own. Anyway, regardless which software you use, quick screencasting is something you may want to look into if you are a creative working with clients.

  1. For one thing, I got to dabble a bit in music again, which led to the beats you hear in the sound track on the video here. Also, now I intend to make good on promises where there were no fixed deadlines involved. My apologies to all who have been waiting for me to come through. I’m on it. Just as soon as I finish Game of Clones. Or whatever it is you kids watch these days. ↩

Fiction is an art form, and like all art forms it relies for much of its effect on a bunch of shared conventions that both the author and reader are familiar with.

Charlie Stross driving home a point that is true for all forms of communication, really.

The video of Jer Thorp speaking about visualization at TEDxVancouver has been making the rounds among data visualization people. Jer demonstrates quite aptly what a lot of people in visualization strive to achieve: create a narrative structure that amplifies the cognitive efficacy of data, or in other words, helps human find meaning in data. That’s what “data in a human context” is all about.

I’d like to point you to two angles on this talk that at first glance seem only remotely related to visualization, yet deserve some recognition of their own:

  1. The reference to HyperCard is perhaps one of the single most useful pieces of inspiration to creators of meaning out there. There has not been a product quite like it ever since it was expelled from the walled garden of Apple and yet this part of the history of modern communication technology is easily overlooked because it no longer matches people’s perception of how to use computers. No longer does the average user feel that she can tinker with a device to make it solve computational problems for which no app exists. Hypercards addressed a fundamental problem of how we can create a pathway to make knowledge accessible. Much of it came down to the way it incorporated explorability and reduced complexity into a framework where you could create your own tools without having to study programming first. Bereft of such an experience in the post-PC world (sic!) where will a new generation of users find the inspiration to be creators?

  2. Meaning, not just in this talk but also in visualization in general, is created through finding connective patterns for pieces of information. The adhesive structure that links nodes of knowledge to each other is actually not just a byproduct of certain visualizations. It is the very structure by which knowledge is organized in our minds. Frames is a concept that you should familiarize yourself with, if you really mean to create content that is structured to amplify cognition. And I’m not saying that because I have a soft spot for connectionism.

(via just about everyone in my twitterstream)

Periodic Table of Storytelling by *ComputerSherpa Skeuomorphism continues to be a topic in IxD and web design circles. I think this merits revisiting the phenomenon, if only briefly, to discuss how it applies to visualization. In my previous article I defined the phenomenon thusly: Skeuomorphism in its essence is a design cue or pattern that is nonessential for the functionality of a design. However, it is reminiscent of a former design, where it originally was essential. Now, instead of furniture or web apps, I’d like to consider how such patterns translate into a visualization context. The example of the periodic table seems a great fit for a quick demonstration. The structure and alignment of the elements in this periodic table about story tropes tells us nothing about their relation to each other. Both the position of the groups from and the position of the elements within each group are arbitrary. Hence the paradigm in which the information is arranged is nonfunctional when we compare it to the periodic table of elements. There we can infer the atomic number of elements from their position within the paradigm. The original table shows us the properties of chemical elements and the relations between those properties. In our example about story tropes the structure is merely a decorative element. It is a lot of fun, though. The table has appeal that it would not have, were it not for the skeuomorphic reference to the iconic original. Is it possible to make a functional appropriation of the periodic table? Alessio Corti says yes. There at least should be a periodic table of mathematical shapes. But that’s besides the point. The lesson for visualization in its broad sense, encompassing data crunching as well as explanatory diagrams, is that even nonfunctional elements can be meaningful. They enrich the data with a frame of reference. You can communicate the atomic properties of narratives through the metaphor that the periodic table invokes. Create molecular narrative structures out of the elements. Thus, the decoration becomes a narrative of its own to guide your exploration of data. (via Speakersjourney)

Periodic Table of Storytelling by *ComputerSherpa

Skeuomorphism continues to be a topic in IxD and web design circles. I think this merits revisiting the phenomenon, if only briefly, to discuss how it applies to visualization. In my previous article I defined the phenomenon thusly:

Skeuomorphism in its essence is a design cue or pattern that is nonessential for the functionality of a design. However, it is reminiscent of a former design, where it originally was essential.

Now, instead of furniture or web apps, I’d like to consider how such patterns translate into a visualization context. The example of the periodic table seems a great fit for a quick demonstration.

The structure and alignment of the elements in this periodic table about story tropes tells us nothing about their relation to each other. Both the position of the groups from and the position of the elements within each group are arbitrary. Hence the paradigm in which the information is arranged is nonfunctional when we compare it to the periodic table of elements. There we can infer the atomic number of elements from their position within the paradigm. The original table shows us the properties of chemical elements and the relations between those properties.

In our example about story tropes the structure is merely a decorative element. It is a lot of fun, though. The table has appeal that it would not have, were it not for the skeuomorphic reference to the iconic original.

Is it possible to make a functional appropriation of the periodic table? Alessio Corti says yes. There at least should be a periodic table of mathematical shapes. But that’s besides the point.

The lesson for visualization in its broad sense, encompassing data crunching as well as explanatory diagrams, is that even nonfunctional elements can be meaningful. They enrich the data with a frame of reference. You can communicate the atomic properties of narratives through the metaphor that the periodic table invokes. Create molecular narrative structures out of the elements. Thus, the decoration becomes a narrative of its own to guide your exploration of data.

(via Speakersjourney)

The Story of Animation by David Tart on Vimeo

I don’t feel like ranting today, so here’s a little happy fun time feelgood animation about, well, animation. And storytelling. It’s a tad narrow in focus (that’s advertisement for you) but as I said, I’m not in the mood for ranting. Enjoy. We’ll look into the functional properties of animation as a communication tool some other time.

Finding Details of Typography in Prezi

Typography on Prezi

Having made the case that we need to look for examples of inventive information architecture on Prezi that acknowledges the functional paradigm of its medium, today I present you this example by Travis Hitchcock. Prominent indicators link pieces of information (nodes, if you will) to each other, maintaining a hierarchy of information that literally and figuratively scales well.1 I find this quite a compelling case for discovering details about typography through zooming.

  1. By the way, the embed code that Prezi churns out really does not play nice with tumblr. I don’t know if all the divs and classes are meant to be helpful so I can apply my own styling or if they are necessary for the Prezi to work (and I’m too lazy to check) but in any case the result is not pretty. I always have to hope that things work out on the front end once I hit the publish button. ↩