Designing for Social Data Analysis

  • Authors:
  • Martin Wattenberg;Jesse Kriss

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

The NameVoyager, a Web-based visualization of historical trends in baby naming, has proven remarkably popular. We describe design decisions behind the application and lessons learned in creating an application that makes do-it-yourself data mining popular. The prime lesson, it is hypothesized, is that an information visualization tool may be fruitfully viewed not as a tool but as part of an online social environment. In other words, to design a successful exploratory data analysis tool, one good strategy is to create a system that enables "social” data analysis. We end by discussing the design of an extension of the NameVoyager to a more complex data set, in which the principles of social data analysis played a guiding role.