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The Art of Data Visualization: How to Tell Complex Stories Through Smart Design

The Art of Data Visualization: How to Tell Complex Stories Through Smart Design
The volume of data in our age is so vast that whole new research fields have blossomed to develop better and more efficient ways of presenting and organizing information. One such field is data visualization, which can be translated in plain English as visual representations of information. The PBS “Off Book” series turned its attention to data visualization in a short video featuring Edward Tufte, a statistician and professor emeritus at Yale, along with three young designers on the frontiers of data visualization. In much the same way that Marshall McLuhan spoke about principles of communication, Tufte talks in the video about what makes for elegant and effective design. What does Tufte mean by this? For those of us who aren’t designers, it’s refreshing to consider the elements of good visual story-telling. So much of the information we encounter every day is hard to conceptualize. Information may be more abundant but it isn’t new, and neither is data visualization. Related Content: Related:  Methods + SW

Venture Lab | Design Thinking Action Lab All humans are born as creative beings, but as we grow up, school and work offer few opportunities to cultivate and apply our creativity. At Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design - known as the d.school - students of all disciplines learn the design thinking process as a methodology for creative and human-centered problem solving that empowers them to collaborate across disciplines and tackle the world’s biggest challenges. In this experiential course - free and open to all - you will learn the design thinking process by tackling a real world innovation challenge. As preparation for each stage of the challenge, you will explore the main design thinking concepts through short videos, each paired with brief activities to practice relevant methods and approaches. By the end of the course, you will have learned through experience the mindsets and basic tools for each stage of the design thinking process: Empathize: understanding the needs of those you are designing for. Workload.

Cultivating Partnerships in the Digital Humanities - Advice By William Pannapacker As academics we can be too snug in our institutional silos. We sometimes think of one another as competitors for students, and as a result we duplicate scarce resources in mutually damaging ways. Without more coordinated programs, will we go on teaching the way we have since the Industrial Revolution? Will our students, knowing it doesn't have to be that way and worried about their future, lose patience with us? The digital humanities (or, preferably, the more inclusive digital liberal arts) provides a context for facing those questions head-on. Now I want to argue that teaching-focused institutions have much to gain from partnerships with research universities on the digital humanities, and vice versa. Beyond liberal-arts training, the 21st-century workplace increasingly demands that graduates demonstrate technological competence and entrepreneurial ability. Why would a teaching-focused institution want to form a partnership of that kind with a research university?

SCAN and Causal Layered Analysis How do we make sense of story – the stories and narratives and anecdotes that people tell each other and themselves about their world? How can we link between the layers of story to help us make sense of some broader picture, or to derive a clearer view of some desired future? (This is a post I’d promised a colleague a long time back – this is me at last completing on that promise! One of the tools I often use for this purpose is Sohail Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). CLA describes narrative in terms of four distinct layers: – At the surface is the litany, the world of the tabloid-newspaper, the everyday of ‘the world as it should be’ – or, more often, the ‘litany of complaint’ that it’s not ‘as it should be’. – Beneath this is the systemic layer, the layer of social causation. – Beneath this again is the worldview layer – the stories and narratives through which we decide what is ‘relevant fact’ and what is not. Also interesting (to me, at least Over to you, if you wish?

Digital Curation certificate at the University of Maine IRI 2038 Futures Study Launch Date: May 2012 Wrap-up Date: November 2013 As part of IRI’s 75th Anniversary Celebration (2013) IRI commissioned the IRI2038 project, a futures initiative designed to answer the following two questions: How will possible future developments and events impact the art and science of research and technology management over the next 25 years? How can IRI best serve its membership in these possible futures? The primary output of the project is twofold: four plausible, yet provocative scenarios about the future of R&D and innovation management and the results of a backcasting exercise designed to help R&D practitioners prepare for these scenarios. The Scenarios Africa Leapfrogs Developed Countries - An inability to build new capacity in the developed world due to increasing environmental regulations creates a new flexible and localized manufacturing process. Backcasting Africa Leapfrogs Developed Countries Backcasting Summary Discovery Extrapolation The Extrapolation Phase included: Planning

Certificate in Digital Curation This is a graduate certificate to prepare professionals for the curation of digital collections. Upon completion of the course of study, students should have an understanding of the information technology considerations associated with digital information; recognize and be able to articulate the requirements for professionally-responsible curation of digital information; and be able to apply this knowledge to practical digital curation situations. Graduates will find careers in a wide range of institutions including libraries, archives, and museums as well as corporations and government agencies. There is an increasing need for professionals who have the ability to plan, manage and implement practices that ensure the long-term integrity and use of resources that are created in digital form. The Graduate Certificate requires the completion of five courses. Certificate Required Courses (15 Credits): Additional Requirements: Master’s Paper and Field Experience SILS Elective Courses:

The Thing From The Future – Situation Lab - OCADU The Thing From The Future is an award-winning imagination game that challenges players to collaboratively and competitively describe objects from a range of alternative futures. *link fixed The object of the game is to come up with the most entertaining and thought-provoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures. In addition to the deck of 108 game cards, a supply of blank index cards and a pen for each player is required. A single deck of The Thing From The Future cards may be used for play by individuals or by groups of two to six members. There are four types of cards in The Thing From The Future: Arc, Terrain, Object, and Mood. ARC cards broadly describe different kinds of possible futures. Grow is a kind of future in which everything and everyone keeps climbing: population, production, consumption… Collapse is a kind of future in which life as we know it has fallen – or is falling – apart. Team Thanks Getting a Deck

The House of Savoy Superb illuminated paintings distinguish this visual regional history as an album of outstanding quality, to my eye. Please do yourself a favour by clicking through directly to the very large versions of these parchment page images so you can better inspect the manuscript illustrator's exquisite and detailed work. Produced in ~1580, this is quite a late example of such high calibre illumination work, and it was likely a special commission by a member of the royal household in the variable Italian-French-Swiss territory of Savoy. "The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule—through its branch Savoy-Carignano—the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II. The House of Savoy ruled unified Italy for 85 years with Victor Emmanuel II [.. Previously: Illuminated.

The Life Cycle Of Ideas Every scientific idea has its day. Theories are born and experiments are designed; results are put to the test, then disproved or accepted as canon. As scientists discuss an idea, they cite the paper that proposed it in their own work. Then, as the conversation moves on, references to the paper drop off. The rise and fall of citations serves to measure the lifespan of a paper’s underlying ideas. Life sciences tend to have a flatter citations trend [shaded portion], perhaps because ideas in the field are easier for other experts to grasp—in contrast to fields like mathematics—so it takes less time for them to catch on. Data provided by Thomson Reuters Web of Science; Consultation by jevin west, university of Washington; Analysis and Data visualization by Accurat. This article originally appeared in the May 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Digital Tools for Medieval Texts: Workshop at the Huygens ING By Julie Somers At the Huygens ING in The Hague, researchers and program developers convened last week to discuss the creation of tools that are intended to help all ‘scholars-at-large’ of medieval manuscripts use digital technologies in useful ways. The two-day workshop, Easy Tools for Difficult Texts: Manuscripts & Textual Tradition (18-19 April 2013) brought together projects that addressed the varieties and difficulties of managing medieval manuscripts in a digital medium. Wonderfully organized, the first day focused on Digitization and Transcription Tools for Medieval Manuscripts and Markup Tools, while the second day dealt with Editing and Publishing Texts and Browsing and Linking Texts and Corpora.[1] One of the many highlights of the workshop was the demonstration hour (ImageJ, Transcribe Bentham, TPen, EVT, Shared Canvas, eLaborate) where we could watch the tools in action, handling those difficult texts with ease.

Three Horizons – fields of future, full of foresight. I’d like to relate to parts of a book that came out in late 2013 from Bill Sharpe. His book, or actually more a booklet, called “Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope”, published by Triarchy Press, has some really helpful insights. In this book, Bill outlines his distinct ways of creatively working through many of the unknowns, by framing and connecting though the Three Horizons, (3H) as his contribution to the patterning of hope for all our futures. I draw out a lot within his thinking, experiences and approaches within the book. Here are some of the ‘triggers’ I connected with strongly from his book: The three horizons does offer us much to frame the future Firstly, the 3H is actually a simple framework, see my original opening post in 2010,on a quick explanation if you need it. The 3H methodology enables us to look out into the future, across different horizons. Tackling uncertain futures for transformational change So it becomes clear the 3H is a way of working with change Like this:

Registration | Digital Humanities 2013 Registration is now closed. If you would like to attend DH2013 but did not get a chance to register, please contact the conference organizers at DH2013@unl.edu. Check in Schedule The following are the times you will be able to pick up your registration materials. Sunday, July 14 3 – 7 pm Monday, July 15 7 am – 7 pm Tuesday, July 16 7 am – 5: 30 pm Wednesday, July 17 7:30 am – 5 pm Thurs, July 18 7:30 am – 5 pm Friday, July 19 8 am – 3:30 pm The registration desk is located inside the conference hotel, Embassy Suites. Cancellation & Refunds Policy The registration fee is non-refundable at this point.The conference program may be subject to changes.Payments will be refunded if the conference is canceled by the organizer. Questions and Answers Q: Is there a one day attendance rate? Q: Once my registration is confirmed, can I make any amendments to my details? UNL Conference Services is committed to providing appropriate accommodations to guests with disabilities.

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