sxswi: Right Time, Right Place

Image courtesy nickrabinowitz.com

There was lots of mind-expanding tech talk at this afternoon’s panel, “Time Traveling: Interfaces for Geotemporal Visualization.” But enough about that - let’s look at some pretty maps! 


There were lots of truly great interfaces displayed for mapping time and space; so many, in fact, the panelists began collaborating on a blog to share different ways of contextualizing the data. One of the main points the panelists hammered home was that there’s no single way to effectively map data; lots of variables are at play, like whether your focus is more geographical or temporal, or, as presenter Nick Rabinowitz said, whether your visualization is intended to be used for presentation, or analysis.

That said, one awesome example the panelists shared is Trulia Hindsight, what we’d call a presentation map using animation as the format to convey data. Enter any place around the country, and it will start mapping building throughout the town by date built, like we've done here for Austin.