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October 29, 2006
Wearable infovis
Since the last time we spoke about physical infovis, I started a conitnuos research ( here an interesting paper in PDF format ) on the crossing field of infovis and physical computing.
It seems that emerging technologies ( as Arudino, Processing and others ) are reaching a borader audience ( mostly of interaction designer ) that is focusing in designing new META-objects...or better...Virtual/Physical Object.
Today I really would like to let u know about an Univeristy research Project by Mitchell Page that, as from the source, "The system, termed TeamAwear, is shown to enhance and influence game-play by providing subtle visualizations that allow team sports stakeholders to more easily understand and interpret game-related data.
I would like to see the outcome of the whole research, because it seems to be a really, cool project !
Well done !
Ideas, infoVis / information visualization / infoviz, Profiles, Projects, User Experience, User Interfaceshttp://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=135
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Posted by InfoVis at 4:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2006
A proposal for all infovis people
Today I had a new idea in order to promote and diffuse the knowledge about infovis projects, not limiting it to the world wide web.
The idea is really simple:
creating a periodical book with all infovis projects, researches and people ( maybe aggregated by themes, experiences, techniques, etc... ).
The projects and profiles could be submitted directly by the authors; the aim is to have a referencing pubblication about the new ways of infovis, that are growing up together with the official and academic worlds.
The book will not have any editors or any time-delay related problems, because we could use lulu.com services in order to offer a very low TIME-TO-MARKET products and a cheaper price.
The incoming money could be zero or divided by selected authors or ( better ) used to organize new events ( seminars, conferences, and so on ) about infovis.
I will wait for your thoughts and suggestions,
thanks
Events, Ideas, infoVis / information visualization / infoviz, Personal, Projectshttp://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=134
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Posted by InfoVis at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
Congratulations to Domenico, a new
On Monday, the 23rd of October Domenico graduated in Industrial Design at the Design Faculty of Politecnico di Milano, discussing a thesis about infovis and thesaurus.
His work was around a new way to have a better user experience and a more usefull infovis approach to the use of words taxonomies, like thesaurus.
His final project was quite innovative because it was focused on definining the appropriate views and interactions, according to real users tasks ( the case study have been made upon the designNet thesaurus ).
The main interesting aspects of the whole project are related to the information visual handling and the exploration approach to search for words and/or semantic areas.
In next days, we will ask Domenico to let you have a look to his work through the blog.
Finally...congratulations !
Events, infoVis / information visualization / infoviz, Profiles, resources, User Experience, User Interfaceshttp://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=133
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Posted by InfoVis at 2:57 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2006
mobile Voip...it
Today I discovered fring, a new mobile technology enabling mobile Voip on smartphones, as my UMTS enabled Nokia N70.
I installed the software and start doing some tests...
First of all...I called standarn mobile numbers and the quality was very good.
Second, I chatted with some of my Skype contacts and the user experience was not so cool as chatting using Agile Messenger, but it worked..
The last cool test was made doing a Skype call from the train I was travelling on to a friend that was on a bad internet connection in India....amazing...we could talk each other!!!
Event if the delay way around 4/5 seconds...
I suggest to try the new product and give feedback about user-experience to the creators,
because it could be a revolutionary technology enabling real Voip benefits for everybody.
Have a nice day,
Ideas, Mobile, Projects, resources, User Experience, User Interfaceshttp://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=132
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Posted by InfoVis at 5:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 9, 2006
ITR 1
Visokio Omniscope is a Java based software developed by Visokio ( formerly Known as Iokio ), a London based company.
All the images of the review are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielegaliffa/sets/72157594319320100/.
The Omniscope version I tested is the 2.2 and its a important improvements from the version 1.0.
Omniscope allows to use and manipulate data in a very natural way: all the filtering and the search facilities are available through a set of GUI controls.
Omniscope is mainly targetted to finance/business analysts because of its background; in the last monthes something has changed and now the tools seems to be really usefull for other areas of interestes.
The first thing about Omniscope is that it gets data from any source ( a database, a spreadsheet, an XML ) and automatically converts data into the appropriate data types, in order to have the corresponding filters, views and GUI controls for each of them.
After the data loading process has completed, the main interface display the header ( that includes the main commands and the result group ), the main views area and the filters area ( on the right ).
The first things that make Omniscope really interesting is that filters are created according to the data types and they are ready to be used.
Dynamic query model is used to display data variations when using filters; this approach offer an easy approach to get information for the user.
Using dynamic filters could disorientate user from his task; for this reason an "Actions History and a "Reset filters functions are always available to help user to go back on his steps.
When a filter is used, data are automatically grouped in the "included collection and the "excluded colletcion; in this way the user could use both selected data that match ( or not ) the filters criteria.
Data are represented through several available views ( treemaps, advanced barcharts, pie charts, istograms, tables, scatter plots, maps, and so on ).
Into the detail view is always possible
One other key-features is the generation of interactive reports.
Its possible to generate interactivepowerpoint-like slides, with graphical representation of data that dont need to be created everytime.
Also, its possibile to define formula and filter rules to display data.
This feature is very usefull when the analysis require a deep understanding of the issues involved and the standard filters are not suitable to generate knowledge.
The weak points
- The user interface and the graphical solutions are often not appropriate with the context and/or the goal of the UI elements.
- Its possible to work only on a single table of data at time.
- The outcomes have limited customization
- Map Views are not integrated with other map services ( yahoo/google )
The strong points
- Several languages are now available
- Its possible to manage a lot of data
- No Limitation in creating views and dynamic filters
- Interactive Reports creation is very fast and customizable
- High level of interactive content customization
- Use all groups of data ( mainly the excluded from filtered research )
- The slideshow features is interesting
- Map View is often usefull
http://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=131
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Posted by InfoVis at 8:23 AM | Comments (0)
Infovis Tools Review
With today I would like to start a new initiative that focuses on tools ( mainly softwares ) that help us to better use complex data to create information: in order words infovis tools.
The aim of this initiative is to find smart tools and to run real world tests, analizing the tools under the infovis aspects ( and not only from the tech point of view or the graphical one ) and thinking to the tool as an user does.
The images associated with the reviews will be published on flickr, in order to better describe and talk about specific aspects.
In this way it will be possible to discuss, understand and better manage the knowledge around the reviewed tools.
So, dont esistate!
Feel free to suggest tools to test and review in the next posts.
http://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=130
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Posted by InfoVis at 6:46 AM | Comments (0)
Infovis Tools Review [ ITR ]
With today I would like to start a new initiative that focuses on tools ( mainly softwares ) that help us to better use complex data to create information: in order words infovis tools.
The aim of this initiative is to find smart tools and to run real world tests, analizing the tools under the infovis aspects ( and not only from the tech point of view or the graphical one ) and thinking to the tool as an user does.
The images associated with the reviews will be published on flickr, in order to better describe and talk about specific aspects.
In this way it will be possible to discuss, understand and better manage the knowledge around the reviewed tools.
So, dont esistate!
Feel free to suggest tools to test and review in the next posts.
http://www.mentegrafica.it/blog/?p=130
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Posted by InfoVis at 6:46 AM | Comments (0)
