Visual Times: Using visual information for teaching and learning

Pentagon Papers: A visual presentation of data

2011-06-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, the National Archives and Records Administration released an un-redacted version of the Pentagon Papers, official knows as United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by The Department of Defense, http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/. (for more see my post on Learn Digital History at http://learndigitalhistory.blogspot.com/2011/06/pentagon-papers-online.html). The publication is organized in 47 volumes, one of which is Part IV. C. 10. Evolution of the War. Statistical Survey of the War, North and South: 1965 - 1967. This document includes 23 visual displays of statistical information about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam from 1965-9967. Data reported in the document included troop levels, the number of military operations, air sorties, and casualties. The display features 117 events featured on horizontal axises delimiting 3 month periods or yearly quarters. A small black triangle indicates the date of the event with descriptive text to the right of this chronological mark. Events are arranged in a cascading fashion from top to bottom, with the listing of events continuing at the top when space at the bottom runs out. The result is a series of five cascading lists running right to left across the 12 quarters. On top of the event chronology are line graphs displaying data sets. Each data set is represented separately on the even chronology display.

Below is one of the 23 visual. This one displaying U.S. deaths.

Larger version

Mark Twain Autobiography visual navigation

2010-12-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

November, 2010, the first of three volumes of Mark Twain's autobiography was released. The book, released on the centenary of Twain's death (per his request!), is published by the University of California Press in conjunction with the Bancroft Library at UC-Berkley. The book is presented online at http://www.thisismarktwain.com. Featured on the front page of the website is a two part navigational interface (pictured above) that allows uses to browse Twain's life using a conventional chronological schema and an interestingly different autobiographical schema.

The chronological tool (pictured below) enables users to browse 42 episodes featured in the book in chronological order. Each episode is marked by a image that appears above a timeline with the date of the episode. Clicking on the image yields additional information, and in some instances, video or audio of Twain scholars speaking on the topic.

The autobiography tool (pictured below) presents the same 42 episodes, but this time in the order these episodes appear in the autobiography. The same images as are used in the chronological tool appear, but this time in a circular shape floating across the screen from top to bottom. Users can navigate using controls on the top and the bottom of the frame and select an image to access the additional information.

I found the chronological tool to be much more intuitive and informative. Although the autobiographical tool is innovative, the edge that is gained through the differentness of the tool is more than lost by a lack of context. Images in the autobiographical tool appear on a line that zigs and zags across the screen in what appears to be a random order. No dates or other markers are provided to suggest a context for the presentational order of the images. Unlike the temporal connections in the chronological tool, there are no signs or markers on the autobiographical tool that suggest any relational context. Some images (i.e. episodes) are closer in proximity to images that precede or follow, but we do not know if that is an indication of relationship between the episodes. The interface does allow the user to move images on the screen, but there seems to be no logical reason for doing so. If the autobiographical tool is allowed to play, each image moves forward in relief as the full array of images slowly scrolls from top to bottom. This flow suggests a visual narrative that is different than the chronological narrative. I found this feature to be the most powerful. Comparative analysis of both animations might yield some interesting findings.

Netflix rental patterns

2010-01-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

There is much here, particularly if you know the socio-economic patterns of these cities.
From New York Time January 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html

City scents on display

2009-09-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

A cheerful presentation by Jason Logan at the New York Times of an olfactory tour of Manhattan. Much is asked of the viewer in this visual presentation to conjure the smells of New York. But, through the use of creative language that is artfully arrayed in spatial form, we can quite easily imagine the "scents of the city."

Time Magazine visual graphics on historical topics

2009-08-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

For the last six years, Time Magazine has presented graphical representations of information on their magazine website. With a current catalog of 180 graphics, the Time collection is an interesting study in the evolution of web graphics.

The earliest of these graphics titled, "The Shuttle's Triumph and Tragedy," is simply a five panel time line presentation, with each panel containing an image and chronologically arranged summary information about the Space Shuttle Columbia.

the next four graphics were focused on the War in Iraq, a trend in military content that has continued to this day.

This graphic from 2004 is also a time line, but is interestingly static. Although the information is arrayed nicely on the time line, the graphic lacks an interactivity, something we may now come to expect from online graphic.

This 2005 graphic on the Civil War military leadership in the Union Army featured an enhanced level of interactivity across four screens and within screens on roll-over effects and pop-up graphics.

Two Time graphics attempt to represent historical spaces in Monticello and Jamestown.

A more recent 2009 graphic on FDR's war-related actions is decidedly flat in terms of information array and intereactivity. Hopefully, this will not prove to be a new trend at Time.

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History paintings online: Visual presentation and reading the past

2009-07-28T19:33:00.001-07:00

An amazing array of visual artistic content is available on the Web. in this post I look at online representations of Benjamin West's paintings, specifically his history paintings.

A good starting place is Wikimedia Common. This resource includes copyright and royalty free images. An entry on Benjamin West includes (as of this posting) 25 images of his work.

Included in the collection is West's famous 1781 unfinished painting "American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Agreement with Great Britain." Wikimedia Commons also include a category titled History Painting with numerous additional paintings in the genre.

A Google Image search will also yield a nice array of images from a search on Benjamin West. A relatively new feature in Google Images also allows you to search for similar images. This may be helpful if you are trying to find an appropriately sized or shaped image or if you want variations on an image theme.

Here are four images that came up in a Google similar images search on this initial image

The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History from the Metropolitan Museum of Art offers a wide range of essays with accompanying images on a wide range of art topics. An essay on Benjamin West titled Students of Benjamin West (1738–1820) explores the influence of West on American art.

Luna Commons is an online browser that provides access to thousands of art images. A search on Benjamin West yields 27 relevant images of paintings. What makes the resources so valuable are a collection of tools that enable users to export the images in a number of ways including as an embeddable widget (using iframes, unfortunately not supported by Blogger) as well as one click download of the images and export to Powerpoint (embedded using SlideShare below).

Benjamin West

View more presentations from jk1lee.

This graphic, published May 22, 2009 in the Wall Street Journal to accompany a story titled Changing the Art on the White House Walls, illustrates the history of art in the White House

For more on art, portraits, and presidents see my post of Capturing Presidential History.

Iran spy network

2009-06-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology - story here
From Wall Street Journal

Click Interactive Graphic

Type is art

2009-06-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

Type is Art at http://www.typeisart.com/

Technology and openness in government

2009-05-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Sunlight Foundation, support by among others Ebay founder recently published this visual describing the history of public access to federal governmnet information. The graphic uses an interested segmented time line, which can be disorienting on first exposure. The inclusion of text highlighting technological advances is a helpful secondary level of information that aids in contextualizing the primary content.

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100 days press conference

2009-05-11T22:02:00.001-07:00

Screenshot of new interactive feature from the New York Times of President Obama's 100 days news conference. This feature allows readers to search and browse the video and transcript. The inability to search and scan video text continues to limit, and this is step toward a more useful video system.

Online at
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/29/us/politics/200900429_OBAMA_100DAY.html
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Recovery.gov

2009-04-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

The White House attempts here to communicate a series of ideas with this visual, embedded in an iframe here.

The most detailed graphic, represented in the still to the right, is titled “Transforming Federal Building Into High-Performance Green Building. In the middle of this graphic is a representation of a “High Performance Green Building.” The graphic suggest a flow from left to right that involves money. This left to right action is, of course, a priority in English language reading. The stack of bills on the left is labeled a federal distribution. Readers must infer the nature of this distribution. Presumably, it is for “transforming federal buildings.” Such an inference emerges from the title of the graphic and the names associated with the items surrounding the stack of bills. The money on the left then flows into the building, but also flows out to 6 additional sources. These other 6 sources are a mix of specific projects such as U. S. Courthouses and more general expenditures such as “Space Rental.” Flowing out of the “High Performance Green Building” are three items. A deep reading is required in order to understand the relationship between the centerpiece building and the three items on the right. The relationship is ultimately mathematical. The items on the right sum up the 4,274M cost of the “High Performance Green Building.” Essentially, this graphic functions as a blow up of a single project in the overall distribution of funds for federal government environmental building renovations.

Inside the Obama white House

2009-04-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

Graphic
Inside Obama's West Wing

"They say that proximity to power is power. And it comes to follow that the most coveted offices in Washington are those in the West Wing of the White House. Some, like press secretary Robert Gibbs's office, are spacious. Others are cubbyholes. But they are all in the same building as the president's Oval Office. Explore the interactive graphic below for an insider's guide to who's sitting where in President Obama's West Wing." (Printable West Wing Map)

By Laura Stanton, Nathaniel V. Kelso, Philip Rucker, Al Kamen and Karen Yourish - The Washington Post

Ring around NYC from National Geograpghic

2009-03-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

Sharp and illustrative visual from National Geographic that illustrates in simple and stark terms the number of international phone calls by receiving location originating in New York City.
March 2009 NGM, online at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/departments/phone-calls/phone-calls

Shifting the debate

2009-03-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

An interesting resource that tracks You Tube videos according to the political prespective of referring websites.

online at http://www.shiftingthedebate.com/shifting/videobarometer.html

Bush years map

2009-03-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

This graphic appeared in the January/February 2009 online edition of the Atlantic Monthly. The graphic accompanied a story titled Then and now by Timothy Lavin on how the United States has changed in the nine years since George W. Bush's election. The map does a nice job conjuring up the notion of the United States, by using the geographic shape of the U. S. to frame the data. Unfortunately, the positioning of information is unrelated to place. Also, I get a vague sense that the map wants to be a cartogram, but the only relational data presented is inside the individual frames and these are simply graphic illustrations.

There are a couple of, perhaps, coincidental geographic placements. A pig sits right around North Carolina and of course that state is know for is pig and hog farming and BBQ. There is a boat in Florida as well as a graphic illustrating growth in home ownership, appropriate given the housing boom in Florida. On the disturbing side is a graphic around New York illustrating yearly paper use that looks a lot like the World Trade Center Towers.

MSNBC Spectra Visual Newreader

2009-03-03T06:10:00.001-08:00

Many eyes

2009-02-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

One particualarly interesting tool for generating visualizations of text is Many Eyes from the IBM Visual Communication Lab at http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/

This visualization presents differences in the House and Senate stimulus plans debated in Congress n February 2009.

Mall Malaise

2009-02-18T04:58:00.000-08:00

A visual story from AP on the economic problems besetting American malls. This visual item features information on vacancy rates from 76 malls and a detailed analysis of stores in one mall in Minnesota.

Bailout Breakdown

2009-02-18T04:45:00.000-08:00

A graphic from AP detailing how the initial 276 billion of the 700 billion dollar finnacial plan.

Economy Shed 598,000 Jobs in January

2009-02-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Accompanying an front page web article on job losses in January titled Economy Shed 598,000 Jobs in January was this flash graphic.

Electing the Provincial Councils

2009-01-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/30/world/IRAQ-ELECTIONS-PRIMER.html

How the Government Dealt With Past Recessions

2009-01-26T23:19:00.000-08:00

In this visual time line, three scholars narrate how the U. S. government responded to periods of economic crisis.

Inaugural Words

2009-01-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

The New York Times published this visual display of the words spoken by presidents in their inaugural addresses - online at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/washington/20090117_ADDRESSES.html