By Martina Valkovicova
We borrowed (and adjusted a little) the headline from a highly amusing and interesting TED Talks video: The beauty of data visualization by David McCandless. The world nowadays is powered, overwhelmed and saturated with information.
We all need it to survive and let’s be honest – we are all hungry for information. If we weren’t, the Web 2.0 and its social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites and plethora of other sources would not exist. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to process large amounts of information, especially if it is connected to vast data sets and subsets.
But wait, here comes the solution: data visualization.
The boring world of numbers and statistics can suddenly become colourful, easily comprehensible and easy to digest. According to Friedman (2008) the “main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. Yet designers often fail to achieve a balance between design and function, creating gorgeous data visualizations which fail to serve their main purpose — to communicate information.”
Yes, the data visualization raises a number of questions in terms of its effectiveness. To those of us who are fascinated by the world of arts and numbers, designing beautiful visuals is a whole new world. Data visualization bridges both perfectly and can create incredible artistic patterns. It can change the way we see the world.
For those who share our view, we highly recommend to have a look at the Business Weeks 21 Heros of Data Visualization. And just to give you a bit of a taste, the following picture represents air traffic over North America, visualizing data about aircraft models, flight routes, and altitudes created by Aaron Koblin.