Brought to you by Better Nouveau, it will feature a partnership between the NodeBox — Experimental Media Research Group and DensityDesign.

Inspired coders, designers but also viz-amateurs are welcome with their knowledge, skills and creativity for a full-immersion visualization experience.

All the details can be found here.
See you in Turin from December 12 to 17.

from ‘Burnt Norton from Four Quartets‘, by T. S. Eliot

The main difference between Fineo and ParSets is the way they manage the relations between data dimensions, from one axis to the other. Fineo works by comparing two dimensions at the time without caring about other dimensions (the previous and the next ones). The other way around (the ParSets’s one) more information is shown at the expense of readability. But this is the same old trade-off.

Here is an example with a simple data-set with 5 dimensions (here you can find the csv):

Fineo:

ParSets:

ParSets works by continuously profiling data, starting from a leading dimension (the first one).

ParSets Ramification:

Fineo’s flows work much more like rivers – once they flow into each other, you can’t distinguish them. This feature is useful when users are more interested in relating different data dimensions next to each other, than centering the visualization around a leading dimension.
The ParSets techniques visualize a specific tree structure. Differently, Fineo has a network-like underlying structure, the diagrams are constructed on a node-edge model: individual categories are nodes, grouped under the dimension they belong to. The number of nodes belonging to the same couple of connected categories provides the weight of the flow. Dimensions, nodes and edges are respectively visualized as axes, rectangles and connecting flows.

Let’s take a closer look. By filtering the first dimension on a single category, it’s easy to perceive this conceptual difference.

Fineo Filtering:

ParSets Filtering:

In the next image we highlighted the number of in/out ribbons in ParSets (4/6) and the in/out flows in Fineo (4/3) – dimension F/category 1.

Model comparison:

These are the reasons why ParSets is stemming from Parallel Coordinates and Fineo is inspired by Sankey diagrams.
Furthermore, when the dimensions possess a temporal connotation (periods of time like months or years), Fineo comes really useful and easy to read: using the flow metaphor taken from Sankey diagrams, Fineo is able to represent a system with changing states over time.

As a last note both of the visualizations are weighted bipartite graphs, which exists long before any interactive software development.
On our part, Fineo was developed to automatize the design of visualizations like the ones featured in the DRM and CPF projects. The projects are dated back to 2008 (which, incidentally, is before Parsets was released to the public) and no available program existed able to answer our needs. So we made our own, which subsequently developed in an interactive analytical tool.

With this being said, nothing comes from scratch, as Dr. Sagan said.

You have always dreamt drawing amazing Sankey diagram.
You always wondered how we could managed them in our works.
You probably don’t even know that the Captain Sankey had four names.
And yet you surely know everything about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
One day Minard’s diagram began it all and, ever since, you desired to draw it yourself.
Life is strange, don’t tell us.
Fineo, the best tool to create Sankey diagrams.

Try it. Now.

or read more about it

Three years ago (almost), I discovered an interesting comment about the Places and Spaces: Mapping Science exhibition (2006 edition), curated  by Katy Börner (Indiana University, Director of the InfoVis Lab), and I found particularly interesting the quotation of John Thackara (author of In the Bubble: Designing for a complex world. 2005. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), talking about Macroscopes. In fact that metaphor is, in my opinion quite compelling if you want to talk about the quest for the ‘big picture’ (that actually is often our aim at DensityDesign).

So I investigated a bit and I found a previous book by our colleague (and friend of Thackara) Ezio Manzini (1989. The Materials of Invention: Materials and Design. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) where the concept of the macroscope is used: «The quality of the mental image, which is the point of departure for the problem setting, and the overall map of the possible, whence one can progressively derive more detailed maps upon which to trace the path of the problem solving, originate with the macroscope», and finally I went back to the book of Joël de Rosnay (…), where the author hope for new tools to face the complexity of the world: «Microscope, telescope: these words evoke the great scientific penetrations of the infinitely small and the infinitely great […] Today we are confronted with another infinite: the infinitely complex. We are confounded by the number and variety of elements, of relationships, of interactions and combinations on which the functions of large systems depend. We are only the cells, or the cogs; we are put off by the interdependence and the dynamism of the systems, which transform them at the very moment we study them. We must be able to understand them better in order to guide them better. […] Now a new tool is needed by all those who would try to understand and direct effectively their action in this world, whether they are responsible for major decisions in politics, in science, and in industry or are ordinary people as we are. I shall call this instrument the macroscope (from macro, great, and skopein, to observe).»

Then we start using the idea of macroscope in our presentations (TEDx Italy 2009 – 11:00 – and Better Software 2010) and in some of our papers (itAIS 2010).

Now is quite interesting and even more motivating to see on one of the very recent paper from Katy Börner (2011. Plug-and-Play Macroscopes. Communications of the ACM. Vol. 54(3), 60-69, ACM Press) the concept and the metaphor of macroscope taken (again) into consideration!

This current condition is enhanced by uncertain knowledge of the phenomena listed above: is there such thing as the economic crisis? Is the environment really in danger? Are fixed-term contracts synonymous with precariousness or flexibility? Are public schools and university at risk?

This year students tried to answer these question and will present their findings in a open to public presentation (a party-like one!) at the Politecnico di Milano.

You’re invited to come and share this day with us!

24th February 2011, 11:30 AM

CT48 – Building N
Bovisa Campus
Politecnico di Milano
Via Durando 10, 20158 Milan

Oh and, by the way, happy new year to everyone, trusted followers.

Related projects

Net@Work

The Map of the Future

Julia Sagar – Who did you create this for – was it a commission or a personal project?
Donato Ricci – Since DensityDesign is a research lab, we work both on non-commissioned projects, in which we put in practice innovative visual languages and techniques, and commissioned ones that give us the chance to apply the results of our findings to a wider audience. In these particular cases, the projects were commissions by the Italian edition of Wired magazine.

JS – What was the brief?
DR – Usually clients give us open briefs just because they know we are researchers; our contribution lies also in structuring the client’s communication needs, making these needs clearer.
Michele Graffieti – Regarding the ‘Map of the Future‘ the brief simply consisted of making the reading of the next future predicted by the IFTF (‘Institute For The Future’ of Palo Alto, CA) more fascinating, thoughtful and challenging.
In the second work, the brief was even more informal: the main requirement was to explain the current dynamics of the web, focusing on its innate collaborative nature and on its evolving trends, in both quantitative and qualitative point of view.

JS Who was the target audience?
MG – Our target audiences were Wired readers: they generally have good familiarity with technology and emerging languages of information visualization. What we were surprised of, is the great echo generated by these projects in more “traditional” contexts and websites.

JS Tell us about the design… Where did you get your inspiration?
DR – Producing a visual concept is a matter of truly understanding information, data and knowledge we are asked to communicate: then we choose the right language with which we can reach the audience. This path helps us to bend visual languages and expressive forms to data, and not vice-versa.
MG – To choose the right visual language we often take inspiration from the past. Instead of passively joining current trends of info-visualization driven by theme, we prefer to go back to the debut of that theme in social discussion, and look at the works produced when, for the first time, people were thinking about issues that are comparable to ours. Indeed, for ‘Net@Work‘ the inspiration came from the working class ideal of the Russian socialism and, regarding the inner structure, the inspiration came from the organization chart of a ’40s/’50s company, found on ‘Monogrammi e figure’ by Giovanni Anceschi.
To create the world of the ‘Map of the Future‘ instead, we decided to evoke the retro-futurism of ‘50s when everything seemed possible and the consequences of the smallest transformation were exaggerated on purpose to open people’s mind in wonder.

JS – How can you match your research activity about visual languages with editorial project on a large scale?
DR – We do that by mixing up the challenging perspective of the brief, the aesthetic representation skills of graphic designers, the analytical ability of researchers and the overall goal to communicate to a general public.
We use our expertise in graphic design to widen the concept of “speculative design” and visual epistemology, as a rhetorical strategy to raise social awareness in relevant social issues (the world of future and the new collaborative way of working over the net, in this case).
We use both the most innovative techniques of data visualization and graphic design to provoke new interpretation and discussion with our readers.
Typography, illustration and graphics are only part of a job aimed at generating an open discussion, not predetermined, nor anticipated in the design itself.

Page 15 of Computer Arts Projects, issue 141, published on October 2010.

JS – How much creative freedom did you have?
DR – As said before, we only work on project that allows us to be involved from the first step of concept-generation, so we had lots of creative freedom.

JS What was the hardest part of the project?
MG – The hardest part of these projects and, more generally, of our work is to make sense of all the ideas we generate, to let the analytical and the expressive approaches live together.
In the ‘Map of the Future‘ the trouble was not to do “Pindaric flights”.
In ‘Net@Work‘ the difficulty consisted of highlighting the single website data without compromising the conceptualized narration level.

JS What elements are you most proud of, or think are most important?
MG – In both the projects we succeeded in creating two landscapes enabling the observer to choose their preferred method to analyze the information. We think the most important aspect of our work is to let people wonder even in front of the most boring (at least, apparently) amount of data: storytelling is a very useful tool to reach this goal.
DR – And by the way, we think the human-headed-dog and the super-powerful-robot are outstanding!

JS – What programs/software did you use?
MG – Beyond the evergreen Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, we tend to use traditional collage, photography and hand-made elements to the utmost. In the ‘Map of the Future‘ the white buildings in the left hand side have been made out of paper, as well as the bridge.
DR – In addiction we often use software to fast visualize big amount of data or to automatically draw rough net. Sometimes part of the tools we need is created on our own: for example, in ‘Net@Work‘ we developed a small software to automatically generate every single robot according to four variables which defined their height, shoulder width, fatness and saturation.

JS – Given the chance, would you do anything differently?
DR, MG – No, we wouldn’t. We are always right, and if we don’t, who cares? Joking apart, we are proud of the results of these two projects and we are firmly convinced that nobody is able to correct his/her own work but has to be willing of re-think the concept when anybody else proves even one of his/her mistakes.