Thoughtful Chunk 9: Visualizing Data--Look, See, Understand

Hans Rosling uses the power of visuals, animation,and digital tools to create a context or platform for the understanding of statistical data. Watch an amazing BBC broadcast documentary hosted by Hans Rosling about the impact of using simplified graphical representations of local and global data to promote change and greater understanding of information.

Download  Gapminder and use the provided data sets in teaching or for your own edification: it is a fabulous application and is made freely available because "Gapminder is a non-profit foundation based in Stockholm. Our goal is to replace devastating myths with a fact-based world view. Our method is to make data easy to understand" (Hans Rosling, Co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation)

Here global trends in health and economics come to vivid life:

Here Hans Rosling effectively uses visuals to posit the impact  

that acquiring a washing machine can have on different parts of the world.

Here Hans Rosling uses the power of visuals to debunk pervasive 
myths about the status of the 'developed' versus the 'developing' world:

Our class Media Wiki has many connections to valuable information and resources concerning the wise use of various media elements.

For Edward Tufte, a guru of information design, the choice of how to display information can be a life or death matter. He uses the example of the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster in which seven crew members died to show how the design of the chart, which related launches to dates not to temperature, had hidden the important information that may have changed this terrible outcome.  For Tufte, "There is all the information necessary here to have saved the Challenger astronauts" (Tufte, as quoted by Phil Patton for the New York Times, 1992). He continued by demonstrating a more efficient, meaningful, and accurate way to chart the information, with the essential data--damage most often happened at low temperatures in the past, and this launch had been activated at the coldest temperature ever compared to the chart--clearly available!

Tufte admonishes that "Content-light splashy graphics, or 'chartjunk' are bad" and that "Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information" (Christopher Bonanos in Culture Pages, 2007). However, given the amount and variety of visual and presentation tools available to all of us today, I wonder whether we have gained enough visual and information literacy to appreciate the finer points that Tufte advocates. It seems that there is far more care and thoughtfulness needed in our digital world, as evidenced by many a website. For example, what is the information to be gleaned from here?

However, I am taken by this interactive graphical Universcale from Nikon that illustrates the idea of "scale" using a very innovative graphical interface. I wonder if Tufte would approve?

There is such a plethora of ideas "out there" regarding the manipulation of graphics, icons, images, etc., that can be wisely and artistically combined to help scaffold cognition both on and off the web. Below is the popular Periodic Table format that has been, in and of itself, usurped for use in many a presentation of information. In fact, Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel of Winterhouse Institute ,which is focused on design education, express concern about such utilization of that which is associated with astounding and outstanding intellectual work, and they worry that visual design tempts us to under utilize intellectual and academic inquiry or worthy social investigation and the like.

As they say,

Often though, we see voice expressed less as an act of subversive will, and more as a staging of false identity: this work says a lot about designers wanting to be artists, using "design" as a weak metaphor for "art" and expressing their personal experience without practical context or intellectual foundation. (Helfend & Drentell, 2003)

It was informative to read through their presentation given at the  AIGA  (national professional design organization) National Design Conference: The Power of Design in Vancouver, 2003. As you continue reading through this presentation, you will see samples of the many uses the periodic table design template has been used for. Continue reading and you will see a different slant from a design perspective: an actual re-designing of the original, familiar template. Here then we see truly creative and informed minds at work!

Again, I wonder whether Tufte would agree.

Link to the Interactive Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Thoughtful Chunk 8: Blended Epistomology

John Seely Brown closing keynote address at the 

New Media Consortium (NCM) 2010 conference

And a creative visual that encapsulates key thoughts from J. S. Brown's presentation above:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Rachel Smith

 

Yet again we encounter the creative use of graphics and playful text that serves to attract our attention, grab our interest as users, and that hopefully presents some insight regarding content: enough that we may want to delve further.

According to their website the New Media Consortium was founded in 1993 in order to:

 "explore and promote innovative applications of technology to teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. The organization's history parallels the emergence of multimedia, the Internet, the world wide web, online video, and the mix of technologies loosely called Web 2.0, and now is poised at the frontier of new innovations like social networks, serious games, virtual worlds, and the semantic web" 

Mimi Ito opening keynote address at the  New Media Consortium (NCM) 2010 conference titled: Learning with Social Media: The Positive Potential of Peer Pressure and Messing Around Online.

In her session Mimi Ito speaks to the power of social media to promote peer-based learning. She also talks of the ability of today's technologies to allow access to experts, learning resources and sharing with the online community. Her criticism is of the education community and its seeming reluctance to embrace such powerful learning. This presentation supports and exemplifies aspects of John Seely Browns ideas around peer learning and the power of social learning and creating.

And another creative visual that encapsulates key thoughts from Mimi Ito's presentation:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Rachel Smith

I wish I could create such wonderful accompanying graphics in my teaching! Wouldn't that be something?

Both of the above speakers advocate much more acceptance of social learning practices than are the norm, however much of what they advocate in the way of changes to practice require more than a pedagogical mind adjustment for teachers: the complete teaching and learning bureaucratic framework would need to accept radical re-situating. 


To be continued...

Thoughtful Chunk 7: Positives of Failure

Henri Petroski on Car Design 

After reading Drink Me: How Americans came to have Cup holders in their cars, by Henri Petroski (Slate, Washington Post, 2004),  I recalled the changes made to an original baby bike stroller. We were given such an item to use when riding with our grandson: admittedly it was second, third or even fourth hand but it was in great shape.

Everything was fabulous except for the fact that if it rained while we were on a ride somewhere, gradually the carriage would fill up with water while the child sat in it! Not only that, it was certainly a challenge to empty it too! The upgrade? It has two grommet holes in its base, beneath where the child actually sits, so that water can drain out! Marvelous! The added benefit: If you use it for carrying shopping instead, it too will remain dry!

Returning to the article mentioned above: Petroski contemplates the rise of the cup holder, so to speak, as a now essential feature in our cars. Imagine, he writes, trying to drink out of a cup as you rode in one of the early type cars! You just wouldn't consider it--too bumpy by far. However, eating and drinking in a parked car was part of the adventures of drive-in restaurants and theaters. Petroski posits that perhaps  the tray that hooked onto the side of the car window frame prompted the design of the now pervasive cup holder. He goes on to describe the many iterations of the cup holder design concepts and products and links these designs to the advent of new cup material and shape technologies. There are the amusing aspects too of cup holder designs that impede safe driving by obstructing controls and the fact that people apparently often want to know the number of cup holders provided before any interest is seriously shown in a particular vehicle! For Petroski, this is not quite correct: he maintains that it is the design of the cup holders, not their number, that can convince people to buy one vehicle rather than another! 

I am so amused by this article and want you to read his message of hope at its conclusion:

"But consumers can expect that cup holders will continue to be improved, like all made things. (One thing to look for is a spring-loaded flap that acts like the rubber ones found on so many cup holder designs: It keeps cups smaller than the holder from jiggling and rattling.) Meanwhile, drivers and passengers alike can still dream of one that will hold whatever size drink container they can buy at a roadside convenience store. This dream cup holder will not obstruct a single other thing in the car and will hold a cup steady on a rocky road. The future cup holder, one can further dream, will move under a cup being put down by a driver watching the road the way an outfielder moves under a fly ball. Truly visionary drivers might even fantasize of the robot cup holder that can move a cup into a hand groping in the dark." (Henry Petroski, 2004, Drink Me)

Actually, Petroski includes a quote from Donald Norman's 2004 book, Emotional Design, in which he criticizes an automobile design culture that "proclaims that the engineer knows best, and considers studies of real people driving their vehicles irrelevant" (p. 73).

In Form Follows Failure, Chapter 2 of The Evolution of Useful Things (1992), Petroski argues that the phrase "form follows function" is misleading and that in reality "form follows failure." This implies that a particular design for an item can be traced through the various problems of earlier iterations and finding out how each iteration tried to solve a problem from the one before. As he writes, the central idea is, "the form of made things is always subject to change in response to their real or perceived shortcomings, their failures to function properly" (p. 22). Products are, in other words, always on their journey toward perfection: each iteration is an approximation of the ultimate design-- hence the changes in design of the child bike carriage above! 

Of particular note for the development of our own products and their subsequent evaluation is the following from the same chapter:

"The distinctly human activities of invention, design, and development are themselves not so distinct as the separate words for them imply, and in their use of failure these endeavors do in fact form a continuum of activity that determines the shapes and forms of every made object." (p. 32)

Here is a design for a glass for drinking a lot: Glass Tank, designed  and manufactured by Kyouei Design. Any thoughts?

I have a thought! 

Let's drink to the Positives of Failure! Cheers!

Thoughtful Chunk 6: People & Machines

David Hanson on "Robots That Show Emotion"

"Awaken intelligent robotic beings: Grant them sparks of true consciousness and creativity, and distribute these beings and their constituent technologies into the world." (From Hanson Robotics Web-site) 


After coming across the above TEDTalk, I visited and explored David Hanson's site where  more illuminating videos and explanations are available. I was immediately struck by the connections to Donald Norman's text, The Design of Future Things, in particular the chapter titled, The Psychology of People and Machines, pp. 35-55.  


Here Norman uses descriptives such as, "Some machines are obstinate. Others are temperamental. Some are delicate, some rugged" (p.36). For Norman these have become valid, realistic characterizations. I am somewhat reluctant to agree with this assessment, although after viewing the above video and more, I was astonished at how human-like robotic machines are becoming! Indeed I had to suspend disbelief!


For David Hanson, through the innovation and use of Frubber™ combined with Character Engine cognition software, these "conversational character robots" purport to be sentient and empathetic to the observer and "Handled well, this combination truly comes to life, looks you warmly in the eye and inspires the sense of a soul in the machine."  The Character Engine  "enables robots to think, to feel, to perceive people and understand speech, hold natural conversations, and evolve into ever smarter beings" (http://hansonrobotics.wordpress.com/press-statement/)

"This is the new era of art—art that awakens, befriends you, and that you must nurture as it grows up to live his or her own life. Artistry is as important as science in this quest."

(http://hansonrobotics.wordpress.com/press-statement/) 


 However, Norman suggests,  
"don't believe all the hype. Lots of hobbyists and small ventures would have you believe that robots are already here, capable of a wide variety of interactions.... most of these so-called applications are more imagination than reality, with unreliable mechanisms barely able to get through demonstrations." (Robots in the Home: What Might They Do?)



But Norman still urges us to "Think of what will happen in twenty years, when machines are a thousand more times more powerful than they are today---or in forty years, when they will be a million times more powerful." (The Design of Future Things, 2007, p. 39)


The more humanly realistic some machines are designed to appear, the more we seem to accept them as containing a human-ness, which is hard to define or describe. I am not sure to which scenario I would rather drift:  Will I want to relate to machines that in no way emulate this human-ness, or would I have greater patience with a robotic 'being' that emulates although does not actually possess human-ness? I fear that I may be more willing to pass over control of certain aspects of my life if 'it' appeared outwardly human!

I must confess that I received a dog that rolls over and roars with laughter when activated by motion nearby: I love it! And what attracts me? The 'dog-ness' (read human-ness) of its laugh. Very real and very contagious. I join in with laughter every time, without anything amusing being apparent. Hm...I wonder if this is significant? As Norman points out, "The market for robots that entertain by being cute and cuddly is already well established." (Robots in the Home: What Might They do?)



On a connected, although more serious, note I wonder about the challenges of relating to these ever more complex machines whether they outwardly display a human-ness or not. We are gradually losing control over, and the ability to understand the workings of, the ever more seemingly 'clever' machines. Even when a product appears simple in appearance or not too challenging to operate, there are the underlying operational mysteries that we are not privy to. Hence, if there is a malfunction, or we want to alter some performance aspect, no simple process usually offers itself. I remember our first car, a Morris Minor, which had seen better days to be sure, often needing human encouragement to start beyond the usual turn of the ignition key. With paternal care my husband would jump out of the car, give a few turns of the Starting Handle-- a metal L-shaped rod that fit into the front of the car and simply connected to the engine--and voilå, the car would start...it never failed! 


Today, if our latest car doesn't start---the car doesn't start! End of story! Beyond the frustration and inconvenience, sometimes it would be just be reassuring and somewhat comforting to know that we humans still hold the reins---or should I say, the steering wheel? This amusing advert for Allstate insurance underlines my point. Should vehicles or humans have the final say? Norman would probably say, "It depends."

 Allstate TV Ad: GPS Mayhem

I am reminded here of the question Norman (2007) raises, "Which should be the predictable element, the person or the intelligent device" (p. 76)?  He also warns, "Machines that try to infer motives of people, that try to second-guess their actions, are apt to be unsettling at best, and in the worst case, dangerous" (p. 77).

Thoughtful Chunk 5: Festival of Learning & Technology Highlights

To be continued!

Glogster Fun Attempt

This posting is just for fun. I was experimenting to see whether I could post a Glogster 'Poster' to this blog. And, yes you can, but you need to edit the HTML otherwise it is huge!

Thoughtful Chunk 4: Motion Graphics/Animation

Stephen Watkins - 2011 Showreel from Stephen Watkins on Vimeo.

I chose the above video as a sample of various ways to use visuals as animated graphics and because I really enjoyed watching it. Stephen Watkins, the video producer,  is an award winning designer and animator.  Read about his experiences and view further work at http://www.watkins.com.au/about.htm
and http://vimeo.com/user5779769/videos/sort:date 
The above particular video is a mash-up of some of his work in order for him to advertise his abilities and the quality and variety of his work, plus the many applications or methods he is able to use. I think it works very well indeed!

I have very much enjoyed creating animations with students that I have taught. We have created stop motion animations using a camera and many different materials, such as scrap materials, Lego, shapes, cut-out figures etc. I have used this process as a strategy for students to explain and teach to other students through the animation, a process, an idea, a story, a concept, etc. We have used his process to demonstrate mathematical, scientific, social studies concepts and ideas, plus animated "the how we did something" to demonstrate to parents. It appears to be very motivating to use and create with in this type of setting. From this creator view it is a worthy visual to create and use. The class Media Wiki will explore whether it is also worthy from a viewer's perspective and/or whether it is valid or appropriate visual representation for product tutorials, advertising, Web-pages and the like. Here is a link to the Animation section of our group Wiki: http://mediawiki6792011.wikispaces.com/Animation

In my User-Centered Design course, my group is at the development stage for an extension to the Virti-Cue product we have designed. We are considering and comparing the efficacy of different formats to use in presenting a series of tutorials for our users. We have played with the idea of using basic cut-out images to show the step-by-step actions needed to create a new story and add pictures using the Virti-Cue application. Here is our mini-sample:

Here we are trying out the idea that an animation can clearly map out and demonstrate a function or an action that would be more complex if shown in real-time video with the real objects: The person would be much bigger in relation to the item, and the item would need to be much smaller which would make this simple process much more complex to view and complicate the learning for the user. Also, here,  the application itself is simplified down to its basic functions, as a strategy for teaching and learning. An animation can be recorded at whatever speed is deemed appropriate for understanding to happen.

My own current understanding of animation as an effective visual representational method revolves around the notion that it is a sound way to show otherwise inanimate objects moving! This can be purely an artistic and fun endeavor or it can have some utility. For example, demonstrating how various parts of an item come together into a oneness: this may well  be an impossible and task to show in real-time video (length of film, size of item etc.) but could be shown by 'stitching' together each of the screen shots until the completed item can be viewed. In other words, animation can make 'alive' that which is not! An animation creates the illusion of reality which is very useful, for example, in the 2d environment of the computer screen: Here we can animate a 2d object and make the viewer see its 3d-ness. We can demonstrate the function of, say, various tools, both of the physical and iconic kind.

However, too much use of animation is a distraction as we see on many a web page. Here, the animations may have no purpose, no content that is of value or concern to the visitor, and does not serve to explain or demonstrate anything of worth to the user. Animations need to be carefully crafted so that they, for example, are not running too slow or too fast--losing the user in either boredom or eye-strain!

Here is a very simple student made animation demonstrating the use of Tangrams to create a Fish!

To be continued...