maxgadney.com

PSFK and data products in advertising

PSFK recently did and interview with us about our approach to work - and especially the Titanic video.

PSFK has a broad audience but it got me thinking about who is interested in what we do.

Why would advertisers be interested in data products? (the upcoming Cannes Lions creativity festival will likely be more film that app heavy)

The answer to this is that many advertisers are interested in anything that grows a customer relationship with a brand or product.

Data-enabled products do this at their core - they take in data (often from the customer - blood pressure, miles run, food bought) and feed back recommendations or show the activity of others.

Nike+ is the classic example of these 'personal analytics' - they do so well because they are collecting the data as well as presenting it and as advertisers will know from their travails with the market research industry, decisions/products are only as good as the data collected.

The main problem facing advertisers - who are by large a smart bunch is their clients inability to commit to the length (cost is secondary) of projects that require this software/product development, data collection and feedback.

This is one reason that the companies (such as MassiveHealth) develop their own consumer analytics apps. But not all companies have capable development teams - and that is where advertisers may get involved - if they don't, the clients will look elsewhere. They may not have the internal capability (data-product development teams in agencies?) either - and that is where companies like us come in.

So I think there is a place for advertisers to get in on the act with creating data apps for their clients - there is no doubt that such work will benefit their relationship with the clients as well as their clients customers. Even people who like words like CRM will be happy. It just needs the right client to see the light.

'You Are Here' - article in new Eye magazine

The new eye magazine is out and I've got a couple of articles in it.

This one is about the current state of information design in industry.

And there is another one that features in a look back at important information design from history.

If you don't know Eye magazine, it is the best graphic design magazine in the world. It is generally a challenge to get designers to say anything insightful, but Eye manages to find those that can. 

It is also a marvelous piece of design in itself. Many design magazines abdicate a mission of beauty, worried that their customers will gripe - but Simon Esterson and team are more than up to it.

Buy Eye.

Titanic video for BBC History

My company After the Flood has made another video for BBC Knowledge and Learning.

This time we did a film for the upcoming 100 year anniversary of the sinking of Titanic.

It will sit in their Titanic section of the History website

There is more write-up here on the main site.

Hey look, the Goodyear Blimp!

 I've just seen a tweet from a US sportscaster on the Man Utd result

"With the win, Manchester United is 90.4% favorite to win PL title, per SPI. Odds were 77.1 pct before weekend."

Fair enough - but that isnt the way most of everyone else talks about football. The things people want evidence on are not the things that supply obvious data. This is why football is a different game than most US sport(s).

We want depth - but not of that stuff. A big project at the moment (separate from the MC work) addresses this.

And so does an upcoming article.

More soon.

Strata 2012

This is an interview I did while at Strata 2012.

It is about video data graphics and how to to them. 

The video refers to this one which I showed at the conference.

I'm not sure if the actual conference talk is up yet, but the interview is a decent summary.

There was a lot more about how video design can teach UI design a thing or too also.

My talk at Strata

In case you have come to this blog to find out whether it will be worth selecting my talk at Strata, let me give you some clues and you can make up your mind.

The talk is about video graphics and what makes good ones. But it is also about how the design principles of decent graphics can be applied to interface design.

It is more likely that people at Strata are involved with the latter, so at the end of each segment, I'll be stating some ideas on where visualisation interfaces should be headed.

I'll be showing some examples of videos but if you want tonnes of that, that's what the internet is for - especially here.

I'll look at why video graphics are becoming popular and also some of what they are not so good at.

I'll spend a bit discussing what compelling stories are - because without these, any video is unwatchable. I think it is important that video graphics have as much craft at the story level as at the visual level.

I hope to see you there.

Speaking at Strata 2012

I'll be speaking at Strata 2012 in late feb.

I'll be talking about work recently done with the BBC and what people in software can learn from video.

I was there last year and it's a great conference for people interested in data.

Here is what is happening

Here are some talks from last year

After the Flood - My new company

After the Flood is my new company.

I founded it a month or so ago and have been very busy - on client projects and meeting new clients too.

I'm going to continue to blog here though - a good thing about doing so much new work is that it leads to lots of new ideas.

The thoughts in the blog are absolutely of my employer.

Why People Love Maps

Hey! Look! A map!

We love maps because we know how to read them, but there are other reasons that many visualisations end up as maps and unfortunately the answer doesn't always have the end user in mind.

Designers love maps because-

- they are easily understood by users, most people can read a map

- they are easy to make - plenty of them online or as vectors to buy and / or trace

- clients want them because they see them, use them and know what they are

- (I also think that on a deeper level, our brains work like maps, with co-located repositories of certain stuff on tap and that we recognise this almost as looking in a mirror when we see one)

But anyway...

I think the main reason is that one of the cleanest and most robust data-sets available these days is map data - location , gis gps etc data. And people have trouble finding good data to build with. So they resort to map data.

When projects at the concept stage discuss data product possibiities, many end products are imagined. But when the investigation of available data (some say materials) happens, it often happens that the reliable data that the project requires is not available.

But there is always some map data and most things are based somewhere so that's that solved. It's a map.

The answer is to put planning into finding data that will fuel your true product aspirations.

The answer is to add data sourcing to the list of data science skills and data engineering aptitude. A data sommelier if you will.

Doing something about health? Don't just do a map because the government data sets are all geo based. Just as Apple finds new raw materials to build thinner laptops, or buys companies who can make 10% better batteries, so should data engineers insist on the right materials to build with.

They may not own enough domain expertise to understand where these data sets lie/ Is it them? Is it an IA job? It's probably one of the new jobs springing up these days.

All I know is "what data shall we use" is a vital pillar of any product concepting session.

People love maps and rightly so but in a hundred years they'll be literate in other useful visual tools - we can't make these without being interested in what they are made of.

We cant make these without getting good at sourcing and making new data.

New Company News incoming

I've been quiet on the blog front recently because I've been setting up a new company.

We'll be launching the site soon so watch this space.

maxgadney.com blogging will resume soon...