Animations and movements - how to use them effectively with data visualization

Interview with Irene de la Torre Arenas

Join us while Irene and I talk about how animations and movements can create a lot of advantages such as the following:

• Portray data directly through motion (what Irene defines as ‘data as motion’). This is an example of it.
• Interpolate through data values (‘motion as an interpolation of data values’). Gapminder, or the visualizations showing how PASI changes through time under different psoriasis treatments (see paper here).
• Guide viewers through the visualization (‘motion as a storytelling device’). Like in this visualization where every time the user interacts a transition happens.
• And captivate viewers (‘motion as a captivator’). All the examples mentioned above fit in this category.

Further useful references:

• Visualization Special interest group blog: https://vis-sig.github.io/blog/
• Hans Roslings gapminder https://www.gapminder.org/
• Hans Roslings video with the BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8t4k0Q8e8Y
• We feel fine http://wefeelfine.org/ (video about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSGpOSgnfz8)
• Contiguous animated edge-based cartograms
  • for traffic visualization https://vimeo.com/91325884 
  • Wind map http://hint.fm/wind/ 
  • Earth https://earth.nullschool.net/ 
• Coronavirus: How can we imagine the scale of Covid's death toll? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-7464500a-6368-4029-aa41-ab94e0ee09fb 
• Minimum Fleet http://senseable.mit.edu/MinimumFleet/ 
• The state financial disclosure project https://web.northeastern.edu/disclosure-project/ 
• Swimming World Record throughout History https://irenedelatorre.github.io/swimming-records/index.html 

Movements and transformations of Irene (thesis) https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:cj82qj439

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