Despite the troubles in the newspaper industry, some -- notably the New York Times and Wall Street Journal -- have been exceptionally innovative in the area of data visualization. Both have really raised their game in their widespread presentation of data in both the print and online versions.
A couple of recent visualizations from the New York Times team caught our attention as great examples of using motion charts to display change over time and interactivity to encourage exploring data.
The second analysis, How Different Groups Spend Their Day, presents data from the American Time Use Survey -- an impressive 50,000+ data points in a single interactive chart. This analysis strikes an almost perfect balance, being simple enough to invite interaction but deep enough in terms of data and dimensions to sustain considerable exploring of the data set.
Besides being of great general interest (who would have guessed that the average American spends only 16 minutes a day "relaxing and thinking", versus 2 hours, 46 minutes a day consuming "TV and movies"?), these are good examples of what can be done with current data visualization methods for the two most basic types of business data presentations. Turning a Corner? is a good example of using motion charts to present complex data, via a novel form of analysis, to support a specific conclusion or recommendation. How Different Groups Spend Their Day is a nice form of interactive dashboard reporting of regularly generated data.
Now, if we could only have the thirty people who currently staff the graphics department at the New York Times.
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