About Tom Carden

About Michal Migurski

In this workshop you will:

• Explore the shape and flow of your data set
• Learn how to make your project work
• Discover how to make your project the best it can be

Interested in current state-of-the art web-native information, visualization and mapping? If you’re a designer, aficionado, or owner of large data sets, join us to gain a clear understanding of the possibilities for presenting and interacting with graphical displays of information online. You will also come away from this workshop with an overview of the tools and techniques used by leading practitioners in the field.

In this workshop, we will cover the three stages of visualization:

Hour 1: Explore

For your project to succeed, you must gain an understanding of the shape and flow of your data set. In the first hour of this workshop, we will detail the exploration stage of numerous projects from Stamen, and demonstrate how the artifacts produced during this phase can be compelling deliverables and thought pieces in their own right. Attendees will observe popular sketching tools such as Processing, Python and various databases.

Hour 2: Make It Work

To make it all work, details need to be fleshed out. Databases must be built, API’s designed, interactions resolved and kinks ironed out. During this hour, we will call out examples and lessons from our own past projects and explore how a promising object can grow into a working piece. We will also show how an agile development process can be applied to design work and how interactions with information make data visualization a distinct form of development.

Hour 3: Make It Good

Near the end of every project, there is the possibility for smart interventions that tie the whole thing together. Walt Disney called this “the weenie.” In this hour, we’ll show how to maintain flexibility and looseness through a project so that it’s maximally responsive to transformative 11th-hour nudges.

During this tour, we will provide our favorite visualization weenies from our own work and that of others.