Life & Research Notes

Nice mention on Infosthetics of the InfoVis panel I participated in last week. I also wrote a short post and slides from my position talk on the Swivel blog. While it would take more than a roomful of researchers for me to label something a “revolution,” I am certain collaborative data systems are going to be big. It’s great to stay connected with the research side of the discussion, especially in Visualization, where Swivel’s early stage offerings are admittedly much more humble and simple than sophisticated projects like Many Eyes.

Also, frankly, I was surprised and dismayed to find out that the topic of putting “sophisticated visualization techniques in the hands of lay users” was even a controversial one. While the overwhelming sentiment in the room was pro-democratization, there was some tense internal community introspection happening there that, in all honesty, made me relieved to be an outsider. While this sort of question may seem interesting as a hypothetical, it is a non-issue when you are actually hammering out a product in a competitive market. Or, rather, the question changes to an imperative: design for simplicity while maintaining expressivity. Low floors, high ceilings, etc.