Innovation Can Mean Looking at Data in New Ways
By Roger Kenny & Colin Barr
Science fiction assures us that we’ll gather information in the future by parsing cool-looking three-dimensional holograms, not columns of figures set off by commas. Over the past few years, various teams at The Wall Street Journal have considered this vision in the context of our journalism.
New technologies enable different ways of looking at and using data. From virtual reality stock market rollercoasters to augmented reality heatmaps, there are any number of ways to make markets data more engaging and accessible. And while these new technologies and formats are not always the most used, experimenting with them teaches us what role they could play in the context of storytelling — and ensures we’re keeping an eye on them as they develop.
Most recently, spatial computing has offered a new frontier. Working collaboratively with colleagues from the WSJ newsroom and Dow Jones Innovation, we put together a plan for what a 3D map of the market could look like and came up with a Magic Leap concept, which you can see as a video here:
How we created the visualization
We started with the universe of U.S.-listed firms with market values north of $1 billion. Each firm is shown as a sphere whose size reflects individual valuation and whose color shows industry classification. The average daily price change, average daily trading volume and sector dictate the sphere’s location on our polar plot, a method of mapping dynamic entities according to their magnitude and phase.
In this case, we mapped volume starting with readings around the periphery of the plot, and rising toward the center. This reversal of traditional axis-coordinate numbering places the most actively traded stocks in the middle of the plot, effectively denoting their status at “center stage” of that trading day.
The live visualization of this data goes a step further, bearing a resemblance to the Doppler radar screen so familiar from the evening news. The stocks shimmer and dance back and forth. You can directly observe the volatility. When big news hits you see the entire market swish back and forth like a wave.
Time marches on
This approach is intriguing but hardly the last word on the subject. Our deep dive into financial-data visualization is important because quantitative analysis has become central to our lives like never before. We will continue to experiment with new technologies.
At The Wall Street Journal, we are committed to helping our readers understand the world we live in — a task that in coming years will mean increasing use of the technical tools we are fashioning in the Innovation Lab. We’re excited to keep working together.
Roger Kenny is the Tech Lead for the Dow Jones Innovation Lab, with a background in the newsroom creating data visualizations for The Wall Street Journal and other publications. Colin Barr is a deputy financial editor at The Wall Street Journal.
