Data Visualization in Everyday Life
The area where I think data viz could most quickly and easily make a difference is in the area of bills and statements. It seems like a dull topic, I know, but imagine the impact of suddenly giving millions of people genuine and immediate insight into their spending habits, cell phone behaviours or energy consumption. It’s data people are generally either bored or intimidated by but the impact of genuinely understanding and seeing patterns in it could be hugely empowering. Knowledge, as they say, is power.
Agreed. And, I’ve been saying that for a while now. I guess I should preface that with the fact that I’m an amateur data visualization wanna-be; I have no idea of the best way to do things, I just know that when I look at a good example, I love it (and vice versa with bad).
I think good data visualization can really help businesses make decisions and clear up any vague areas that data provides. I’d really like to partner up with someone to work on improving different areas where I see problems.
More to this point is the amount of data we can learn about ourselves. I’ve mentioned the quantified self before, but if we can find a way to easily track data on ourselves then present it in a pretty way using data visualization, I believe this will be a marketers dream.
Tags: infographics, infoviz, quantified self, statistics
