CNN were the 1st network to use the Perceptive Pixel touchscreens to visualize data for the elections last year.  I just saw they have a new article on data visualization on their site.  They call it “the new way of looking at the world”.  The article discusses the new tools that are making it easier to see and analyze complex data.  It claims that cheaper technology and the availability of digital data are the main drivers of innovation in the space.  It also mentions the power of data visualization on mobile devices.  The article has the following examples, many of which we have discussed on thedoublethink :

Ben Fry 

Everyblock 

IBM’s Many Eyes 

Yelp’s Monocle

Citysense

Flowing Data

Data visualization is a fascinating and now apparently even newsworthy field.  It can give people access to data in an intuitive and user friendly way.  Some data visualizations can also be incredibly beautiful (like the visualization of the port traffic I described in a previous post).  It can also be extremely helpful when one needs to communicate insights derived from data to a non technical audience. 

One promise however I haven’t really seen it fulfill is the discovery of insights that could not have been found with traditional multivariate statistical techniques.  Though I agree it can help statisticians communicate their insights, I dont think it really helps them discover them.  On the other hand it does provide a much broader audience than just statisticians with data analytics tools.  This is probably the biggest potential for data visualization.  Having people with vastly different backgrounds mine data will almost definitely produce more and richer insights.

But really, is the idea of a data analytics vendor teaming up with a company that has developed a revolutionary user interface that made gaming accessible to a whole new audience so ridiculous?  I don’t think so.  I think it would be great if we could develop a user interface that would allow non technical people to interact with data in an intuitive way.  One of the companies in this area is Perceptive Pixel.  I came across them more than a year ago.  I was looking at interesting ways to visualize data when I saw this video of the mind blowing presentation Jeff Hahn did at TED. 

Jeff founded Perceptive Pixel after his TED presentation.  At the end of 2007 I met up with him in his office which is located on what almost feels like a secret floor in the same building Google occupies in Manhattan.  Jeff told me that initially his main customer was the military.  He wasn’t quite sure what they were using the screens for but the ones he was making at the time were literally bullet proof.  He gave a quick demonstration very much like the one shown in this video.

He also let me play around with it.  I instantly felt like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.  Jeff also said he was working on a deal with CNN to use the screens to cover the 2008 election.  A couple of weeks later I saw John King use his magic wand on CNN for the 1^st time.  Like many others, I became hooked to CNN’s election coverage. 

Today’s shortage in technical talent and abundance of data is creating a real need for instruments that can make data more accessible to non technical people.  Statistics and data-mining can find the information nuggets in large quantities of data.  Data visualization can communicate these often complex insights in a non technical way.  Engaging user interfaces that allow people to explore data intuitively can become another powerful tool to make data more accessible.  Maybe SAS and Nintendo really are on to something here … .