The art of data visualization: Stamen Design event wrapup

The art of making sense of data — and it is truly an art — is a key element in building the future of journalism. Interactive presentations created from data can be personalized by the reader, giving a more engaging news experience. Data-based applications can also lead to new business models, through paid or subscription-based applications that give extra value to readers by providing a new dimension on news coverage.

One of the leaders in data visualization is Stamen Design, which has worked with news organizations and museums alike to help make sense of the world through its unique views of data.

Speaking to a Hacks/Hackers event this week at the Gray Area Foundation For The Arts, Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck discussed some of his firm’s work and philosiphy.

Some highlights from the presentation:

Create maps as tools for exploration

Stamen doesn’t have any preconceptions for what they want their visualizations to show. They aim to create interfaces that allow users to come to their own conclusions about what they see. Part of this is insuring that the data they use is as complete and accurate as possible. They also don’t try to clean up outliers in their data that might appear to be unexpected noise cluttering up a visualization.

Issues of data access

When Stamen was about to release their visualization of crime data in Oakland, the city shut off access to the data pipe. Access to open data is obviously essential for these applications. This is one area where journalists and developers can work together. With their experience finding sources and doing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reporters can help obtain the right information in the right format so that designers and developers can build a complete visualization. That takes an understanding on both sides of what’s available and what format is required.

The best data come from human actions

Data that come from actual human activity is best starting point for creating visualizations. This means information based on how people behave in the real world, not doing something like filling out surveys.

Current tools are complicated and expensive

There are some easy-to-use tools for doing this work, such as Google Maps. But when you want to go beyond just sticking red pins on a map, it can get complicated very quickly. Stamen’s projects require complex and expensive tools that aren’t easily usable by non-techies. Perhaps this will change and there are some people working in this space, such as IBM’s Many Eyes project.

Print-on-demand as a way to bridge the digital divide

Print media through small on-demand runs could be a way to bridge the digital divide and bring some of the information gleaned from data analysis to a wider audience. There have recently been some efforts to use downtime on big presses for short runs.

Want to hear more? The video of the event is embedded below, and here are some photos.

Hacks/Hackers as contact sport

Things got a little heated at the Hacks/Hackers event on the Future of Personalized News.

After founders Dan Olsen of yourversion and Ethan Gahng of lazyfeed talked about providing relevant stories to readers, some in the crowd pressed them about how to pay the creators who craft all that quality media that audiences want.

But as Dan and Ethan pointed out, they aren’t making any money themselves and are still trying to figure out their business model. Ethan said he didn’t think advertising would pay the bills.

Freddy Midi of Netvibes said he’s now cash flow positive, helped by a move to sell dashboards to companies who want to monitor their brand online.

Dan Cohen, a veteran of Google, Yahoo and Pageflakes with years of experience in Web personalization, pointed out that there’s only one content aggregator making big money at the moment: Google.

We’re all trying to figure this out. We need to combine the technologists’ laser focus on user experience with the great writing, photography, video and other media produced by skilled journalists. That’s really what Hacks/Hackers is all about.

One thought that comes to mind from the panel is whether there would be a way to take the personalization technology from yourversion or lazyfeed and incorporate it directly inside a news site. What if news organizations themselves offered a more personalized experience and better user interface: Could that lead to news applications that readers would pay for, especially on a device like the iPad?

Something we didn’t get to at the panel: Serendipity and getting away from the echo chamber.

With all the talk about personalization and giving readers what they want, what about the pleasure of finding something unexpected? We didn’t touch on how to enable the joy of discovery. (As an amusing aside, here’s the background on the origin of the word “serendipity.”)

Audiences are also increasingly going to partisan information sources whose positions they already agree with. That could lead to more polarization and extremism in society, a phenomenon known as “group polarization” that is discussed in this New Yorker article.

What do you think?

I hope we’ll continue the dialogue in the comments below — I’m sure the panel could have gone on for hours last week.

Panel on Future of Personalized News

Thanks to all who attended the Hacks/Hackers meetup on the Future of Personalized News! I’ll be writing more about the event in a separate post — things got a bit heated at times and there was some good debate about how to ensure quality content survives in the aggregation age. The archived livestream is below, and here’s a written summary on Google Buzz by Abe Epton of Google News. (thanks Abe!)

Photos from the event are here. (Thanks to Todd Lappin for helping with this!)

And here are Tweets from the event.

Welcome to the online home of Hacks/Hackers

Welcome to Hacks/Hackers, the online community for discussion around real-life meetups of the same name.

This site will be a group blog about journalism and technology from the epicenter of the media revolution. We will talk about new tools and solutions, highlight best practices, and celebrate innovators and entrepreneurs working to build the future of news.

In this new era, the power is in the audience’s hands. We have only begun to see how the news and information will change from the equalizing power of the Internet. Mobile and wireless technology has made media even more a part of our lives at every moment. Meanwhile, traditional media are struggling to adapt as their monopoly on distribution slips away. By choice or necessity, journalists are becoming entrepreneurs and building personal brands, starting sites focused on niche topics and local beats.

Where this leads us will incorporate some of journalism’s well-worn traditions, like fact checking and critical thinking. But the new media age will be built in greater collaboration with audiences, who can now all commit acts of journalism.

News has always fundamentally been about “social media,” giving people common stories to share and connecting them to others far away. News is now more social than ever, with friends acting as de-facto editors and conversations blossoming on social networking sites.

I look forward to following this journey with all of you and fostering a community of people deeply engaged in not only talking about the future of media, but also actively experimenting to push things forward. There will be stumbles and failures along the way, all of which will help us figure out where we’re going.

Hacks and Hackers panel on future of online magazines, Jan. 7, 2010. (Photo by Patrick Donohue)