T Minus One Month (’til Outlier!)
Plus xenographics, Statistics of the Year, and another call for submissions
Happy New Year! Did you know? In just under one month, the Data Visualization Society will be hosting its first-ever conference, Outlier, and we are SO EXCITED. Outlier will provide inspirational talks, the ability to meet and connect with others, and the opportunity for all attendees to have a voice. In case you missed it, the speaker lineup was just announced: read more here, then hop on over to the conference website to get a ticket at the price of your choice.
Chatting Xenographics With Maarten Lambrechts
Maarten Lambrechts is a freelance data journalist, data designer, and visualization consultant. Recently, he sat down with Nightingale to chat about his work visualizing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, we also asked about another of his claims to fame — the site xeno.graphics, which he created in 2017, and his affinity for weird charts (aka, xenographics).
Nightingale: Tell us about your interest in xenographics.
Maarten: I was reading about visualization and seeing charts on Twitter, and every once in a while, I would see something that I hadn’t seen before. I had the idea of building a collection of all these weird charts so that I could go back to them, but also so that other people could be inspired by them. After collecting examples, I presented at the 2018 OpenVis conference about “the five stars of xenographics,” where mildly weird charts have one star, and very, very weird ones have five stars. Now, many people know me as the guy from xeno.graphics.
If you could be any type of chart, what would you be and why?
I would definitely be a xenographic. I don’t know which one, but it would be a versatile chart that you could use for many different purposes.
What’s your favorite xenographic?
An origin-destination (OD) map! It’s a map composed of many copies of itself, kind of like a fractal map. For example, you have a map of the United States divided into cells, and in each cell there is also a small map of the United States showing how people moved into or out of that cell from the others. I like OD maps because they make you wonder. They might look like art at first, but if you look closer, you can actually gain a lot of insight. They are the perfect mix of abstract art and data map. And, they are also functional.
Write All About It!
Here at Nightingale, we have two big goals for 2021: read a lot, and write a lot. You could be one of our writers! In our last issue, we shared that we’re hoping some of you write about the process of collecting personal data to help achieve your goals and resolutions. Show us your bullet journals, habit trackers, or whatever else you’re using to keep on track!
We also looking for a writer to cover a challenge project that two of our DVS members are conducting on visualizing uncertainty. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please let us know at nightingale@datavisualizationsociety.org (note our new email address!!) or via direct message (Mary Aviles or Jason Forrest) in the DVS member Slack.
Finally, if “write more” is on your list of personal resolutions and you have recently shared a talk, delivered a workshop, or participated in a panel, consider developing that material into an article submission. We can help if you need it. Repurpose that subject matter expertise!
Trivia
Question from the last issue of The ‘Gale: What common household item did one of our writers use to demonstrate scale? Was it a) a plastic turtle, b) a LEGO brick, c) a sprinkle, or d) a Big Mac?
Answer: c) a sprinkle. During Nightingale’s Data Sensification theme week, Alli Torban shared how she used a single cupcake sprinkle to cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity in her young daughters — and she included a list of ideas that might inspire you, too!
In keeping with the New Year theme, which of the following is not a common practice for observing the arrival of the new year? Is it a) eating 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight, b) kissing at midnight, c) cracking open a peppermint pig, or d) hopping back and forth over a threshold 12 times at midnight?
Look for the correct answer in our next issue.
In the Wild
Fun visualizations and dataviz-adjacent content from around the interweb:
In Case You Missed It:
Engaging Your Dashboard Users Through User Testing
User testing is not common practice in internal key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard projects. Yet, it can bring valuable insight, helping create a better user experience. Silvia Romanelli explains how to inform an iterative design cycle and create better user experiences (using Day Doh Viz-inspired visualizations).
“Not on our watch.” The spirit of women activists and the political violence against them during the COVID-19 Pandemic Burst
Through the medium of data visualization Inbal Rief and Ravid Rief hope to shed light on stories of women fighting for their rights during the COVID-19 pandemic burst, of women who are seeking to be heard across social distances and outside lockdowns.
More from Nightingale
Toward Effective Data Journeys in Exploratory Visual Analysis
Embracing Variety — Conveying Different Messages with Your Choice of Data Visualization
