Visualization Options Available in Many Eyes

Finding the right way view your data is as much an art as a science. The visualizations provided on Many Eyes range from the ordinary to the experimental. ManyEyes is deliberately providing a wide array of possibilities since this is an experimental site—and expect to see more soon. The podcast below traces the history of this data visualization project.

clipped from itc.conversationsnetwork.org

IBM researchers Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg are the creators of Many Eyes, a new kind of social website dedicated to data visualization and analysis. Members upload batches of data - about politics, weather, or anything else - then chart, interpret, discuss, and even re-visualize one another's data. The process is fun, and it also points toward a future in which our collective interpretation of the world is more firmly rooted in data.

Both Viegas and Wattenberg are also known for their visualization-based artwork, which has been exhibited in venues such as the London Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The two became a team in 2003 when they decided to visualize Wikipedia, leading to the "history flow" project that revealed the self-healing nature of the online encyclopedia. They are currently exploring the power of web-based visualization and the social forms of data analysis it enables.