Graffiti in NYC

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  Today, Tableau Software launched a data visualization package for websites called Tableau Public.  This package is intended to be used be anyone with a website to embed visualizations on their own sites.

Tableau Software today launched a new product that brings public data to life on the web. Tableau Public, available for free, lets anyone who posts content to the web easily create interactive visualizations and publish them to blogs, web sites, Twitter feeds or anywhere online. Instead of viewing static charts or tables, Tableau Public lets people answer questions and share data interactively on the web. 

The visual above was created using Tableau Public to demonstrate its capabilities, but you’ll notice that I’ve been able to embed it here on Cool Infographics as well.  The visualizations created allow users to share, embed and link to your graphics from anywhere…making them social! They’re also interactive and linked together.  For example, click on the Bronx in the data above, and all of the visuals will highlight just data related to the Bronx.  The map even adjusts to only focus on the Bronx.

About the NY City Graffiti visual: Looking borough by precinct across The Big Apple, one can quickly see that there are some differences in how graffiti is handled. For instance, Staten Island has very little graffiti, but the graffiti they do have lingers without cleanup for almost twice the citywide average. On the other side of the spectrum, Manhattan has over 2000 incidents of graffiti, but it is cleaned up in less than 17 days on average.

Look for more features from Tableua Public here in the future as I experiement and play with it. Thanks to Elissa at Tableau Software for the link and information!   EDIT:  Here’s a news video as part of the announcement.  Thanks Adriana!

Thomas Petersen, co-founder and partner of Danish digital creative agency Hello, reflects on the experience and design implications of the exponential growth of information. “Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can share with our networks, something that we can use, something that we can talk about, something that we can act on, something we didn’t know we didn’t know. It almost seems like an obsession and many critics of digital technology would argue that by consuming information this way we are running the danger of destroying social interaction between humans. One might even say that we have become slaves of the feed. Read full story

Wendy Ding created this infographic in 2007, and recently published a complete tutorial on how she created it on Digital Arts.

After collecting data on skirt lengths and their wearers and locations from flickr.com, this information piece was created to illustrate the statistics. A bar graph, area map with call-outs, and a legend all come together to explain the skirt wearers relationship.This piece garnered an honourable mention from the 2007 Adobe Design Contest for the digital illustration category.Thanks for sharing Wendy!

From the OC Register, an infographic with an inside look at the Matterhorn at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA.  Celebrating its 50th anniversary, this is a rare inside look behind the scenes of a Disney ride.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, researcher director at the Institute for the Future, is working on a book on the end of cyberspace – which he thinks will come as the internet moves off desktops and screens and becomes embedded in things, spaces and minds. So what lies beyond cyberspace, he asks in an essay he wrote for Vodafone’s Receiver magazine. We might find out if we tinker hard enough … “Tinkering is growing in importance as a social movement, as a way of relating to technology and as a source of innovation. Tinkering is about seizing the moment: it is about ad-hoc learning, getting things done, innovation and novelty, all in a highly social, networked environment. What is interesting is that at its best, tinkering has an almost Zen-like sense of the present: its ‘now’ is timeless. It is neither heedless of the past or future, nor is it in headlong pursuit of immediate gratification. Tinkering offers a way of engaging with today’s needs while also keeping an eye on the future consequences of our choices. And the same technological and social trends that have made tinkering appealing seem poised to make it even more pervasive and powerful in the future. Today we tinker with things; tomorrow, we will tinker with the world.” Read full story (In short, we are all hackers now).

When designing software for the iPhone you would think people would use Photoshop, illustrator or the Interface Design software Apple included in the iPhone developer suite. Not Chris over at CulturedCode. He used pencils, wooden forms representing various interface elements, ink, brushes and felt pens to sketch the User Interface for Things:

Make sure you check out this photo full screen. It is just beautiful:

This is from Food & Wine magazine (Sep 2005), and I've kept the hardcopy of this issue for the last four years because of this illustration.  I came across this magazine again today, so I thought I would share.  Apparently I eat sushi completely incorrectly, so I refer back occasionally to remind myself how to eat properly. (I love mixing the wasabi into my soy sauce!)

Here's the link to the original "Sushi In America" feature from the magazine.  You can find these and many other illustrations from Peter Arkle on his website.

Mmmm, fatty tuna is one of the best!

Who really needs a “You Are Here” marker when other visitors’ fingers have done the work for you? (Above, in Florence; below, in San Francisco)

Use-marks, like desire paths, are a kind of emergent behaviour record of previous users’ perceptions (and perceived affordances), intentions, behaviours and preferences. (As Google’s search history is a database of intentions.) Indeed, while we’d probably expect the “You Are Here” spot to be worn (so it’s not telling us anything especially new) can we perhaps think of use-marks / desire paths as being a physical equivalent of revealed preferences? (Carl Myhill almost makes this point in this great paper [PDF].) And (I have to ask), to what extent does the presence of wear and use-marks by previous users influence the use decisions and behaviour of new users (social proof)? If you see a well-trodden path, do you follow it? Do you pick a dog-eared library book to read because it is presumably more interesting than the ones that have never been read? What about where you’re confused by a new interface on, say, a ticket machine? Can you pick it up more quickly by (consciously or otherwise) observing how others have worn or deformed it through prior use? Can we design public products / systems / services which intentionally wear to give cues to future users? How (other than “Most read stories today”) can we apply this digitally?

With just 73x73 pixels to communicate your brand or personality, picking the right Twitter avatar can be a difficult process. A good avatar has to be memorable, well-designed and most of all stand out from the pack. Nevertheless, many Twitter avatars fall into several categories. Here are the most popular:LogosWith so many news organizations and other companies jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, many familiar logos are being transformed into avatars, yet are still instantly recognizable. Most of these avatars are a no-brainer to create.          Professional headshotsNothing says I'm a professional like a classy photo with perfect lighting and the perfect smile. These are great for people who represent a company or institution and usually scream "I mean business."          Cool headshotsThe cool headshot is a carryover of the type of photo you'd see used as a default Facebook or MySpace picture. These avatars say "I might be professional, but I've got tons of personality."          Colorized headshotsDesigners, entertainers and all-around creative people seem to favor the colorized photo, which is even cooler than the cool headshot. The tweeters with these avatars are eager to break away from the pack, stand up and be noticed.          Illustrated avatarsThe illustrated avatar often signifies that the Tweeter has a larger-than-life personality that cannot be expressed in a regular photo. However, it also can signify the person has a Batman/Bruce Wayne complex and is not ready to share their private life or identity with the world.           Pop culture iconsOne of the easiest ways to establish your personal brand of cool is to adopt the personality of a pop culture icon. These tweeps aren't necessarily associated with a brand and are free to co-opt the iconic imagery of someone or something else.          MascotsMascots are used by companies and online services as a figurehead for the brand. Therefore, it is natural that the mascot also serves as the avatar.          Of course, avatars are not limited to Twitter and ideally the same one should be used on multiple social networking sites. Media companies and established brands especially should use the same avatar across the web, on their own sites and as their favicon. Wherever your avatar is used, be sure it's a good one that works for you and stick to it. Just be sure it doesn't look like this:Also on 10,000 Words:• The top 7 mistakes new Twitter users make• 10 Journalists you should follow on Twitter• 25 Tools for getting more out of Twitter• Beyond Twitterfeed: Innovative uses of Twitter in the newsroom• How to analyze your Twitter followers and friends

Matt Jones (of Dopplr) gave a talk recently on seduction at the Sensing and Sensuality conference at the Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden. It’s all about seductive data visualisation. But as per usual, impossible to summarise. And as per usual, highly recommendable. Download talk

I did a small survey with James of publicly available government data to see what the obvious targets would be for an interesting mashup. It’s an interesting but very limited landscape. One set we found was the incident reports of Dutch first aid services which are published at P2000 and parsed by the site Alarmeringen.nl into nicely Google Mapped displays with RSS feeds and SMS alerts. What it didn’t have yet was a decent output to Twitter. So to prod things a bit I made twitter feeds for the four major cities in the Netherlands. Meet:

@al_amsterdam @al_haaglanden @al_rijnmond @al_utrecht

I think it’s easiest to attribute the quote to Matt Jones who in this presentation noted that the best people on Twitter aren’t in fact people. I agree but here the Tweets represent the aggregations of groups of people: the incident and its cause, somebody noticing it and dialing dispatch and finally the fire fighters, paramedics or policemen moving to the scene. It’s interesting imagining what has happened and where, but I don’t really see this feed changing people’s behaviour. Ideally we would achieve a greater granularity intersecting your location with the path of the dispatch, so when you see a police car whizz by, you’d get a tweet later telling you why it was dispatched and what the result was.

■ How to influence user behaviour ■ 12 inspirational design patterns in poster form (plus 35 more) ■ Grouped into 6 ‘lenses’ giving different perspectives

Download the poster [PDF, 1.3MB] - now also includes A4 pages for each lens, for easier printing Start with the problem You have a product, service or environment—a system—where users’ behaviour is important to it working properly (safely, efficiently), so ideally you’d like people to use it in a certain way. Or maybe you have a system where it would be desirable to alter the way that people use it, to improve things for users, the people around them, or society as a whole. How can you modify the design, or redesign the system, to achieve this: to influence, or change users’ behaviour? The design patterns The Design with Intent Toolkit aims to help designers faced with ‘design for behaviour change’ briefs. The poster* [PDF] features 12 design patterns which recur across design fields (interaction, products, architecture), and there are also 35 more detailed here on the website. Some of the names will be unfamiliar, but we hope the patterns and examples will be understandable, and inspire your own concepts. Think about how you might apply the ideas to your brief, and what could work given what you know about the problem. If you get stuck, try combining ideas from different patterns: many real examples can be thought of as using two or more patterns. The patterns are grouped into six ‘lenses’, each offering a different worldview on design and behaviour. The lenses allow you to ask “How might someone else approach the problem?” and ought to help you think outside your initial perspective (or your client’s):

Architectural lens

Positioning & layout Material properties Segmentation & spacing Orientation Removal Movement & oscillation

Errorproofing lens

Defaults Interlock Lock-in & lock-out Extra step Specialised affordances Partial self-correction Portions Conditional warnings

Persuasive lens

Self-monitoring Kairos Reduction Tailoring Tunnelling Feedback through form Simulation & feedforward Operant conditioning Respondent conditioning Computers as social actors

Visual lens

Prominence & visibility Metaphors Perceived affordances Implied sequences Possibility trees Watermarking Proximity & similarity Colour & contrast

Cognitive lens

Social proof Framing Reciprocation Commitment and consistency Affective engagement Authority Scarcity

Security lens

Surveillance Atmospherics Threat of damage What you have What you know or can do Who you are What you’ve done Where you are

What sort of behaviour are you trying to achieve?

See the next page… *Lockton, D., Harrison, D.J., Stanton, N.A. Design for Behaviour Change: The Design with Intent Toolkit v.0.9, Uxbridge: Brunel University 2009 (ISBN 978-1-902316-6-1 print; 978-1-902316-63-5 eBook), http://www.designwithintent.co.uk

The Design with Intent Toolkit v0.9 by Dan Lockton, David Harrison and Neville A. Stanton Introduction | Behaviour | Architectural lens | Errorproofing lens | Persuasive lens | Visual lens | Cognitive lens | Security lens dan@danlockton.co.uk

In a similar vein to the Mosquito, intentionally shallow steps (and, superficially at least–though not really–blue lighting in toilets, which Raph d’Amico dissects well here), we now have residents’ associations installing pink lighting to highlight teenagers’ acne and so drive them away from an area: Residents of a Nottinghamshire housing estate have installed pink lights which show up teenagers’ spots in a bid to stop them gathering in the area. Members of Layton Burroughs Residents’ Association, Mansfield say they have bought the lights in a bid to curb anti-social behaviour. The lights are said to have a calming influence, but they also highlight skin blemishes. The National Youth Agency said it would just move the problem somewhere else. Peta Halls, development officer for the NYA, said: “Anything that aims to embarrass people out of an area is not on. “The pink lights are indiscriminate in that they will impact on all young people and older people who do not, perhaps, have perfect skin. I had heard about this before (thanks, Ed!) but overlooked posting it on the blog - other places the pink lights have been used include Preston and Scunthorpe, to which this quote refers (note the youths=yobs equation): Yobs are being shamed out of anti-social behaviour by bright pink lights which show up their acne. The lights are so strong they highlight skin blemishes and have been successful in moving on youths from troublespots who view pink as being “uncool.” … Manager Dave Hey said: “With the fluorescent pink light we are trying to embarass young people out of the area. “The pink is not seen as particularly macho among young men and apparently it highlights acne and blemishes in the skin. … A North Lincolnshire Council spokesman said: “[...]“On the face of it this sounds barmy. But do young people really want to hang around in an area with a pink glow that makes any spots they have on their face stand out?” With the Mansfield example making the news, it’s good to see that there is, at least, quite a lot of comment pointing out the idiocy of the hard-of-thinking who believe that this sort of measure will actually ’solve the problem of young people’, whatever that might mean, as well as the deeply discriminatory nature of the plan. For example, this rather dim (if perhaps tongue-in-cheek) light in the Nottingham Evening Post has been comprehensively rebutted by a commenter: Trying to use someone’s personal looks against them simply because they meet up with friends and have a social life… If this is the case then I would personally love to see adults banned from meeting up in pubs, parties and generally getting drunk. I would also love to see something making fun of their elderlyness and wrinkle problems. I don’t understand why Britain hates its young people so much. But I can see it storing up a great deal of problems for the future. Photo from this BBC story

We can’t help but be familiar with the concept of ‘malicious code’ in the context of computer security and programming, but in general the idea of products or technology which, as they’re used, sabotage or degrade the performance of a ‘rival’, is intriguing and not well-explored. Scott Craver’s Underhanded C contest is a fascinating example from the ‘white hat’ side of the fence; Microsoft’s use of deliberately targeted style sheets on MSN.com to degrade Opera’s performance is another; and the CIA’s alleged planting of software bugs in Russian pipeline control software is a third. The Sony DRM rootkit might also fall into this category (as would this!) But on a much more concrete level, we have this playful example: Memoires by Guy Debord, psychogeographer and Situationist, was originally published with a rough sandpaper cover: Memoires was written, or rather assembled, by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn in 1957. Debord himself often referred to Memoires as an anti-book, and the original edition was bound in sandpaper, that it might destroy other books. The text is entirely composed of fragments taken from other texts: photographs, advertisements, comic strips, poetry, novels, philosophy, pornography, architectural diagrams, newspapers, military histories, wood block engravings, travel books, etc. Each page presents a collage of such materials connected or effaced by Jorn’s structures portantes, lines or amorphous painted shapes that mediate the relationships between the fragments. (from an article by David Banash)

And from this article by Christian Nolle: The book is most famous for its sandpaper cover. An auto-destruction feature that enabled it to damage not only the book it might be standing next to in the bookshelf, but also the person who would be reading it. An anti-book to destroy all other books. Permild writes: “Long had he [Jorn] asked me, if I couldn’t find a unconventional material for the book cover. Preferably some sticky asphalt or perhaps glass wool. Kiddingly, he wanted, that by looking at people, you should be able to tell whether or not they had had the book in their hands. He acquiesced by my [Permild’s] final suggestion: sandpaper (flint) nr. 2: ‘Fine. Can you imagine the result when the book lies on a blank polished mahogany table, or when it’s inserted or taken out of the bookshelf. It plans shavings of the neighbours desert goat [?]’. In all the literature that I have located, Debord is the person who is refered to as the inventor of the sandpaper cover. However, as it turns out Debord had nothing to do with it… Permild continues, «Asger loved - as he often expressed it, to place small time controlled bombs». This was certainly a bomb. A bomb invented by the printer, whose job is normally of a technical nature. The sandpaper cover was a really good idea, but practically it never managed to practice what it preached. It did, however, make its readers conscious about handling it or where to place it. One the other hand, Memoires placed itself on a shelf among precious object, something to be handled with great care… The American Hakem Bey did something similar in the 1970s. In homage to Guy Debord, Bey made a book with sandpaper on the inside. This way he rendered the book into auto-destruct mode if you would ever dare to read it. A potential bomb to go off if you would open it. Memoires, on other hand is a bomb, not a potential bomb. No matter how you would handle it, there was always the danger that it could damage your precious collection of 1920s French poetry. The photos above come from this French eBay listing - the copy on sale reached €3,810.