Data design systems and styleguides are currently a huge trend in the data design world. Moritz is joined by Gabrielle Mérite and Alan Wilson and together we exchange experiences in this emerging space, from designing dataviz components as part of Adobe Spectrum , the styleguide for Deloitte’s Insights Magazine or the WHO Data Design Language . Gabriele also wrote about adding touches of ethical guidance in guidelines in one of her recent newsletters. Enjoy! Related episodes Challenges of Being ...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 170
We have Vidya Setlur on the show to talk about the role language, and natural language processing (NLP) play in data visualization and analytics. Vidya is the director of research at Tableau and has a background in natural language processing and visualization. She is one of the main drivers behind Eviza , a research-based prototype and the corresponding product Ask Data , developed within Tableau to interact with data visualizations through natural language. She is also the co-author, with Brid...
Dec 12, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 169
Finally, this year we managed to record another classic episode from the IEEE VIS Conference (we recorded a total of 10 with this one!) We have Data Stories’ friend Prof. Tamara Munzner with us to talk about the conference and to highlight a few things she picked from the many events that happened over this week-long event. Links IEEE Vis ’22 Our guest: Tamara Munzner VIS Keynote: Marti Hearst – Show It or Tell It ? VIS Capstone: Kerry Magruder – Galileo’s Telescope Discoveries: Thinking Visuall...
Nov 21, 2022•57 min•Ep. 168
In this new episode, we talk about the interplay between statistics and data visualization. We do that with Andrew Gelman , Professor of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia University, and Jessica Hullman , Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University. Andrew started the popular blog “Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science,” which has an active community of readers and has been around for many years. Jessica started contributing lately with many exciting ...
Oct 06, 2022•49 min•Ep. 167
Hey all, we are back! In this episode, we have Amanda Makulec to catch up on what happened during this whole period of time. Amanda is a public health and data visualization expert and she is the Executive Director of the Data Visualization Society . In the episode, we talk about the Data Visualization Society, the new Information is Beautiful Awards (now organized by the DVS team), and how visualization has evolved lately. Links WHO Data Design Language Climate & Conflict Analysis for Germa...
Sep 09, 2022•59 min•Ep. 166
Visualization is a very powerful cognitive tool. I think we all agree with that. But what happens if a person is visually impaired or has other impairments that prevent them to fully benefit from it? It’s surprising, despite the huge success visualization had during these last few years, how little we have to show in terms of supporting this very relevant segment of the population. To discuss this topic we have on the show Sarah Fossheim. Sarah is a full-stack developer and UX researcher with a ...
Jul 21, 2021•50 min•Ep. 165
We have our friend Sandra Rendgen on the show to talk about the work of Edward Tufte. Tufte does not need any introductions of course. We discuss his early works and efforts, all the books he published, his contribution and legacy and the influence he had on our work. Enjoy the show! Remember: our podcast is listener-supported, please consider making a donation! Using Patreon or Paypal . Thanks Links Impfdashboard < https://impfdashboard.de > Enrico’s ML vis work: Slice Lens < https://g...
Mar 09, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 164
This week, we are joined by Amelia Wattenberger , journalist-engineer at the Pudding and book author . We discuss the exciting Svelte framework for web development, which is especially well suited for developing interactive data visualizations. Hear how it compares to other frameworks like react, why web development nowadays seems so complicated, and finally, hear a few ideas for last minute dataviz-related present ideas for the holiday season Links Svelte tutorial svelte.recipes Svelte Radio Ma...
Dec 14, 2020•47 min•Ep. 163
Hey all, we are back! In this classic episode we go over highlights from the IEEE VIS’20 conference. We cover a broad set of themes with Danielle Szafir from University of Colorado and Miriah Meyer from University of Utah, who helped us explore latest trends in visualization. See the main links and details in the show notes below. There is a lot to explore! Remember: our podcast is listener-supported, please consider making a donation! Using Patreon or Paypal . Links Topic: IEEE VIS conference &...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 162
We have renowned data visualizer Shirley Wu with us again (we had her before in episode 98) to talk about a new project she and her team developed to help people reason about the covid19 pandemic at a local community level. The team developed a simulation game that shows you what happens when you make certain sets of decisions over time that may affect the spread of the virus. You can play with others and your goal is to cooperate. Needless to say the tool uses some really interesting visualizat...
Jun 03, 2020•40 min•Ep. 161
Photo Credit: Kris Tsujikawa We hope everyone is doing well! We finally decided to record an episode on visualization and covid19. It’s been a crazy several weeks and one of the most interesting developments has been to see how prominent visualization has been in the constant flux of information. Who expected visualization to be so relevant, uh?! And when we talk about data and pandemics we could not find a better person than Carl Bergstrom, Professor of Biology at University of Washington, with...
May 20, 2020•52 min•Ep. 160
This is our second episode of our mini-series on data visualization agencies. For this episode we have Caroline Goulard from Dataveyes and Gabriele Rossi from Accurat. With them we talk about their quintessential projects, how to balance experimental with regular customers’ projects, and how the data visualization field changed over the years. [Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-...
Apr 16, 2020•56 min•Ep. 159
This is the first episode of a mini-series of Data Visualization agencies. After so many years producing this podcast we realized we never really focused on agencies and we decided it’s time to rectify! Agencies have slowly become one of the most relevant realities of the data visualization ecosystem and business landscape. In this first episode, we have Thomas Clever to talk about Clever Franke and Benjamin Wiederkehr from Interactive Things . They have been around for more than 10 years and th...
Apr 02, 2020•58 min•Ep. 158
We have Barbara Tversky with us to talk about “spatial cognition”; the way humans perceive space and how space perception is related to the many ways we think. Barbara is a renowned cognitive scientist and a Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University. She has an extensive literature on spatial cognition and specific research on how people perceive and use diagrams, maps and other visual representations. On the show we talk about her new book called “Mind in Motions” in which Ba...
Mar 19, 2020•57 min•Ep. 157
In this episode we have PhD students Yongsu Ahn and Alex Cabrera to talk about two separate data visualization systems they developed to help people analyze machine learning models in terms of potential biases they may have. The systems are called FairSight and FairVis and have slightly different goals. FairSight focuses on models that generate rankings (e.g., in school admissions) and FairVis more on comparison of fairness metrics. With them we explore the world of “machine bias” trying to unde...
Mar 05, 2020•43 min•Ep. 156
Duncan is the CEO of Flourish, a popular data visualization tool to help people create storytelling visualizations from data. Duncan founded Flourish together with Robin Houston in 2016 and since then they made a lot of progress and acquired a large user base. It’s always great to hear about successful data visualization companies! On the show Duncan describes what Flourish is, how it works and how it differs from other data visualization tools. We also talk about the unique playback option Flou...
Feb 13, 2020•41 min•Ep. 155
We have Angela Morelli and Tom Gabriel Johansen to talk about their effort in developing infographics for several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Creating such reports entails a very complex and orchestrated process that needs to end with a total consensus of all the participating countries. In the show Angela and Tom tell the story of what it takes to generate such reports and handle the complex process of co-designing such important report with a large group of...
Jan 30, 2020•54 min•Ep. 154
We have Marcin Ignac from Variable to talk about Data Art. Marcin and his studio have a very nice mix of data visualization and generative design projects creating stunning visuals for brands such as Nike and IBM. On the show we talk about the scope and unique features of data art, the process the studio follows, the specific set of tools Marcin developed for visual programming and tips to get started with this kind of projects. See the long list of pointers in the links below! [Our podcast is f...
Jan 15, 2020•46 min•Ep. 153
Hi everyone! We are once again at the end of a whole year. After having “end of the year episodes” with other podcasters, going around the world, and chatting with Andy and Robert, we decided to try something different this time: we asked a group of data visualization professionals to send us an audio snippet summarizing what happened in specific areas of the field over the last year. The result is a great multifaceted collage of stories and personalities. See below who we have interviewed and w...
Dec 19, 2019•1 hr 49 min•Ep. 152
In this episode we talk about “future interfaces” with David Sheldon-Hicks: interfaces that are developed in futuristic movies. David is the founder and creative director of Territory Studio. They are the people behind the screen design of a lot of iconic movies such as The Martian , Blade Runner and Ex Machina . On the show, we talk about what it takes to develop this kind of interfaces and how they interact with film directors. We also talk about interaction paradigms and classic movies from t...
Dec 04, 2019•45 min•Ep. 151
We have Tamara Munzner from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and Robert Kosara from Tableau Research on the show to go through some of our personal highlights from the IEEE Visualization Conference 2019. We talk about some of the co-located events, some of the technical papers and major trends observed this year. Make sure to take a look at the links below, there is a lot of material! And especially the videos. There are quite a few that have been posted online this year. Enjoy the...
Nov 20, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 150
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] This episode is a dream come true – we have long wanted to invite Randall Munroe to the show. Randall is the mastermind behind the xkcd webcomics which have zillions of fans around the globe. In his stick figure cartoons and hilarious mini-stories, he comments on complicated scientific issues. Over...
Nov 05, 2019•50 min•Ep. 149
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] In this episode we have Lace Padilla on the show to talk about how cognitive science can help create better visualizations. Lace is a newly appointed Assistant Professor at Cognitive UC Merced, where she directs the SPACE Lab. Lace’s expertise is cognitive science, and she has published numerous pa...
Oct 23, 2019•46 min•Ep. 148
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] We have climate scientist Ed Hawkins on the show to talk about climate visualization. Ed is the person behind the famous spiral and stripe visualizations (see the images below). On the show we talk about how he created these visualizations and what was the impetus behind them. We also talk about br...
Oct 09, 2019•39 min•Ep. 147
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] We have digital artist Nicholas Rougeux on the show to talk about his beautiful data art projects and the processes he follows. Nicholas created numerous iconic pieces with an extraordinary attention to details, such as “Seeing Music”, where he visualizes musical scores from famous composers, “Byrn...
Sep 25, 2019•40 min•Ep. 146
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] We have Federica Cocco and John Burn-Murdoch on the show to talk about their new Financial Times visualization series called Data Crunch. The series features Federica and John having a data-driven conversation about some social or economic trend while aided by graphs and charts. It’s a new way of d...
Sep 11, 2019•41 min•Ep. 145
We have art historian Sandra Rendgen on the show to talk about where data visualization comes from. Sandra published two great books on the topic, one called “The Minard System”, on the great Minard and the “History of Information Graphics” with contributions from multiple authors. On the show we talk about graphical systems in the middle ages, the great efforts in scientific cartography in the age of discovery and the innovation spurred by statistic al thinking and associated graphical formats....
Aug 21, 2019•47 min•Ep. 144
Matt Daniels from The Pudding [Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] We have Matt Daniels on the show again (after more than 3 years!). Matt is the CEO of The Pudding, a collective of journalist-engineers that create visual essays that explain ideas debated in culture. Their pieces are incredibly engaging, somewhat witty and always stun...
Jul 31, 2019•52 min•Ep. 143
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] We have Evan Peck on the show to talk about the research he and his students recently published on “Data Is Personal”. The study consists of 42 interviews made in rural Pennsylvania to see how people from different educational backgrounds ranked a set of various data visualizations. The study raise...
Jul 10, 2019•42 min•Ep. 142
[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal . And thank you!] We have Eva-Lotta Lamm joining us to talk about the value of sketching and how it relates to data visualization. Eva-Lotta is a UX designer turned expert on sketching and sketchnoting: the art of summarizing talks through sketches. In the show we talk about visual thinking, sketchnoting and paralle...
Jun 19, 2019•41 min•Ep. 141
