Christina Dulude

This is the first general session at HighEdWeb.

1974 was the conceptual end of the 1960s. Since then, data storage has been commoditized and is much more accessible. More ools for participation + greater scale of data = now we’re surrounded by data. Numbers by themselves are meaningless; we need metadata and/or visualizations for it to make sense. Since people process information differently, it’s good to have different ways of presenting data. However, be careful about “over-decorating” it, or else the meaning is lost.

We looked at a visualization from 1854 mapping the cholera outbreak in London. The visualization narrowed the source of the disease to one contaminated pump. This empirical data helped dispel superstition and class discrimination. Another example is the London Underground map.

• Find a story in the data.
• Assign different visual cues to each dimension of the data.
• Remove everything that isn’t telling the story.

Many designers moved from print to web. Those who gave up control and were most willing to embrace change were the ones to transition best. CSS Zen Garden is a good example of this. Reading sites through RSS rather than a regular website is another. Enable users to find their own stories in the data.

You can use your data ton interact with your system — i.e., Trends in Google Reader.

We need to provide filters to enable clarity and find trends that the designers of data never imagined.

Shift has moved from:

• Storytelling -> Discovery
• Visual cues -> Interactivity
• Editing -> Filtering

Math is easy; design is hard.

We need to shift our perceptions on how students communicate. Teenagers have a much different idea of public vs. private. Older people things information is private until made public; teens think the reverse.

Know yourself — then understand the user.