Last November Density Design has been invited by the School of Art and Architecture of Stockholm to organize a workshop of data visualization with the student of a master. They were working on the same topic, the city of Pune in India, trying to understand how to visualize some data about the city.

Students had different background studies, none of them was a graphic designer, mostly architects and artists, so data visualization was a challenge for them all.

Groups had different themes to work on about Pune, different questions to be answered “graphically”:
- How the city of Pune is Green? analyzing the environmental changes of the city,
- How accessible is Pune? exploring the ways of transportation from/to Pune,
- How the IT technology affects the life of the citizens? showing why Pune is the IT Capital of India,
- What is growing in Pune? trying to understand how urban landscape is changing through the city-expansion.

During our week in Stockholm we had some design talks with the students, trying to understand the graphic issues linked with their data about the city of Pune. They had a week to produce a poster, so it has been a nice challenge for everybody. All groups produced very interesting visualizations, if we consider that they had no experience with graphic languages, and especially with information design.

Tags: City · Complexity · Design · Diagram · Infovis · MapNo Comments.

The listener (in fables or music) or the observer (in cinema and theater) plays a fundamental role in the narration process. The narrator evokes whereas the observer interprets through his imaginary. The more qualitative is the narrator evocation, the more the observer becomes co-author of the story.

In the visualization of complex networks, the designer should use a narrative mode of though, giving to the audience a good story more than a sound argument. As the movie director, the designer aim to choose the visualization that more preserves the complexity of the environment. As a result he takes a political stance: he directs actors (the elements of a system), he decides the light design (the choice of the elements to visualize), the set designs (the imagery to evoke), the different optical lens (the power of focusing) and most important, the critical point of view of the camera (intentionality).

We will present our research in the visualization of complex systems. The paper “Tell them anything but the truth: they will find their own. How we visualize the map of the future with respect to the audience of our story” focuses on the emerging need for a narrative approach for the understanding of complex networks. We consider narrations as tools with the paramount function of myths <to find a shape, a form, in the turmoil of human experience>.

We are proud to present it at the Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks — a Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci 2010 taking place at BarabásiLab — Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University in Boston, MA, on Monday, May 10, 2010.

See you there!

Tags: Complexity · Diagram · Events · Infovis · Knowledge Visualization · Map · Papers · Theory1 Comment

This is a map of Europe as you’ve never seen it. It shows how people in the 27 EU states perceive the impact of the internet and mobile phones on their lives – and then contrasts this with their actual penetration in each country. We wanted to explore new ways to visualize such complex data. So we worked with a statistics team, under Marco Fattore, to crunch data from a 2008 Eurobarometer survey of 27,000 people. The result is this contour map, which makes use of the isobars of traditional cartography. Each panel above refers to a specific question in the survey. The higher a country, the more its citizens say the technology matters. The cartogram shows the tech’s actual penetration. A high penetration of technology doesn’t mean people see a real benefit in using it, the way we see the world is changing as more data is available. We wanted to show a new way to look at geography as Europe’s landscape gets reshaped.

THE EUROBAROMETER SURVEY LAST SEPTEMBER ASKED 27,000 EUROPEANS THESE QUESTIONS: (Numbers relate to the panels on the main map):

1 Has the internet improved how you do your job?
2 Has using a mobile phone helped in your work?
3 Has the internet made you more informed about current issues?
4 Has using a mobile phone helped you to be more informed?
5 Has the internet improved your opportunity to share views/access culture?
6 Have mobile phones helped you to share ideas and content such as photos with others?
7 Has the internet improved how you pursue your hobbies?
8 Have mobile phones helped you better manage your leisure time?
9 Has the internet improved your relationships with family and friends?
10 Have mobile phones helped you keep in contact with family and friends?

“Penetration” is calculated from the percentages of households and businesses with broadband access; and the percentage of households with access to the internet via PC, digital TV and mobile device.

Credits

Paolo Ciuccarelli (Scientific Responsible)
Marco Fattore (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Statistics – data analysis)
Donato Ricci (creative direction Project Coordination)
Michele Mauri, Giorgio Caviglia (coding)
Luca Masud (art direction)
Lorenzo Fernandez, Mario Porpora (designer)

Tags: Complexity · Design · Diagram · Infovis · Map · Representation · Statistic2 Comments

On March 23-24th i’ll held a conference in Bari, at the Polytechnic, about “Wayfinding and the Image of the City”

During the first day i’ll talk about the history of wayfinding and maps, then we’ll start a short workshop about the visualization of the city. The students will be asked to think of their relationship with the city, their imaginaries, landmarks or key-points. So Bari itself will be mapped from a subjective point of view, in order to obtain and to visualize a kind of “Personal Geography”, using mind-mapping, diagrammatic languages or photographic surveys.

It’s an experiment we’ll start on that event and try to continue in the future, with the same students and maybe new discoveries.

Everybody who’s gonna pass by Bari is invited to the event.

More info to follow

Tags: City · Events · Map · Ph.D. Activities · WayfindingNo Comments.

2009 has been a very exciting year,
We visualized poverty, we investigated three some relationships, we understood the meaning of fuzzy, we explored the power of halftone, we folded polyhedrons, we start to twitter, we discussed about uncertainty, turtles, Knowledge Visualization, casual loops and social audits, sustainability and ecological impacts; we addressed urban school needs, we followed student in design schools, we connected design research hubs, we drew map of future, we started a quotation wall, we argued (a lot) we agreed (sometimes) we did our best (almost always); someone went to new Orleans, someone to Paris, someone to Venice, someone to Naples, someone to Como, someone to Korea. Someone is gone and now lives far away, someone will come back. If we draw a map, it will be quite dense, of course.

Now the 2010 has started and I wish everyone an exciting and challenging year again; I wish you be brave and  question all the problems you will face, I wish you never stop till you feel it is good enough, I wish you find a way of lighten difficult situations and even more to fully enjoy the pleasant ones, i wish you will keep on telling amazing stories. happy 2010!

Tags: PeopleNo Comments.

On november 2009 Density Design has been invited to take part to the first italian TEDx event on Lake Como. What’s a TEDx event? It’s a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience, as told in the official website.
Our research group was there (represented by Paolo Ciuccarelli) to share thoughts about some of our dearest issues like complexity, visualization, knowledge, information aesthetics.
Here you can experience the presentation we designed for the event.

Complexity is a journey to infinity, and beyond! (© 1995, Buzz Lightyear) therefore the story we decided to tell in Como begins from the universe, and goes through the stars and planets, down to Density-Earth, a great place where statistics become information aesthetics, visualizations reveal ‘big pictures’ and potatoes are in fact big problems to solve.
What?!
Seriously, it’s easier if you look at the presentation up here and read the story we’re glad to spread.

If you’d like to watch the official video recording of the evening (and you understand italian), play it below.
For the english-subtitled version, check it out in the next few days.

like making a movie building this perfomances took hundreds (mmm just some to be honest) smart collaborators:
Screenplay – Paolo ciuccarelli
Additional screenplay – Donato Ricci
Concept – Michele Graffieti
Drawings – Michele Graffieti, Mario Porpora
Storyboard Artist – Michele Graffieti
Animation - Michele Graffieti, Mario Porpora
Coordinator – Mario Porpora, Donato Ricci
Flashman – Mario Porpora
Title Designer - Michele Graffieti
Text editing - Eileen Bernardi, Lorenzo Fernandez
Catering – Giorgio Caviglia, Michele Graffieti, Mario Porpora

Tags: Complexity · Density Design Lab · Events · Knowledge Visualization · Theory3 Comments

A very interesting set of conferences will take place in Bari, October 22nd-23rd

La Città senza nome – Nameless City
Signs and Signages in the contemporary landscape

The conference will be a good opportunity to discuss about the city, its shape, its function and its identity, together with many different experts, from semiotic or anthropology to information design.

October 22nd

Session I: Reading the city
with Marc Augé, George Ritzer, Enzo Mari

Session II: City edges
with Augusto Ponzio, Giulia Ceriani, Antonio Somaini

Session III: Informing the city
with Giovanni Anceschi, Paul Mijksenaar

October 23rd

Session IV: Highly imaginative horizons
with Franco Federici, Ugo La Pietra, Roberto Casati, Scott Burnham, Sébastien Thiery, Antonio Romano, Renato Nicolini

More information on the website:
http://www.cittasenzanome.com/?page_id=53&language=it

Tags: City · Design · EventsNo Comments.

What challenges are we going to face in the next 10 years? And what kind of ideas are going to help us in overcoming them?
Even though predicting the future is not a game, a game is exactly what the Institute for the Future used to answer these dilemmas: 8 October 2008, Jane McGonigal, reasearcher at IFTF launched Superstruct (Su` per`struct ‘vt 1.To build over or upon another structure; to erect upon a foundation) , a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that outlined the world of the future, thanks to the ideas and the collaboration of hundreds of users.

After six weeks the game came to its conclusion: Hundreds of ideas, superstructures for our future, guidelines to redefine the world of today and to improve and prepare it for the challenges of the next decade: From big new infrastructure projects to nanotechnology, from overcoming economies of scale to projects of “vertical farming”.

The final report of this first stage of the game was used for the design of our map: The editor in chief of Wired Italia, Riccardo Luna, asked us to visualize the complex net of ideas and assumptions that game’s users produced.

[Read more →]

Tags: Complexity · Density Design Lab · Events · Map · Scenario19 Comments

Some exciting sketches for our future projects…

Stay tuned!

Tags: UncategorizedNo Comments.

October 9th 2009
10.00-13.00
International week of Design
PAN – Palazzo delle Arti di Napoli

“L’utente fantasma”

“Ghost user”

Next month i’ll take part to a conference in Naples, during the International Week of Design organized by AIAP, about the “Ghost user”, concerning the forgotten role of the final user of any design project and its relationship with design process.
I will discuss it together with the semiologist Antonio Perri and some graphic designers, like Silvia Sfligiotti, Max Gaeta and Carlotta Latessa.
My intervention will concern, in particular, the gap between some information design artifacts, such as diagrams, maps and signages, and the final user to whom the projects are meant. The basic statement is always the same: information design should show complexity of the world but making it understandable, clear and ‘readable’.
Sometimes design artifacts are a projection of the designer’s ego, in a sort of narcissistic, self centered vision of projects, disregarding the user needs; some others design processes aren’t even taken into consideration, designers give the goal of understanding for granted: the results are incomprehensible artifacts, where communication isn’t assured, leading to stress, lack of self-estimate, or even to dangerous situations.
Therefore the over mentioned gap is a complex element itself, which need at list to be analyzed.

This and much more in Naples.

http://www.aiap.it/documenti/11484/148

Tags: Design · Events · InfovisNo Comments.