Compare this to the boxes-and-arrows diagram used in the 4700-word CRS Manual.

What gives the interactive chart its punch is the use of verbs to describe the connections between the elements. Verbs like “contain”, “create”, “perform” are contrasted with “are part of”, “are created by”, “are performed by”. These words identify the relationship between subjects and objects in a much more informative way than lines with arrowheads.

What I find most interesting about this map is the level of abstraction. While the ordered circles offer the same data relationship of area to value as a system like Worldmapper (though the “area” of CAF’s unitless “giving index” is somewhat mysterious), the presentation is simpler and far more flexible.

It is surprising how well the placement of a circle in rough proximity to its neighbors succeeds in providing orientation. Without the need to show contiguous borders, regions can be easily isolated, or even repositioned. It’s an elegant system, within its own parameters.

While 2011 support for current common browsers is the most useful view, Irish and Manian have provided data for 2008, 2009, and 2010 as well. In the slideshow below I show a screenshot of each of the four views. It makes a nice animation.

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The visual is created with HTML5 and CSS3, so it is best viewed with an current browser. Don’t even bother with MSIE 7.

(via the LinkedIn Web Standards Group)

Click through for more.

(via Ann Althouse)

Here, the increasing energy of powerful quakes is shown as an animation (the color coding refers to tsunami potential, based on NOAA’s data and key):

Compare the animation to this graph from Matlab Geeks:

The animation tells a story at the expense of comparison and data density. Even with the zoom out, the animation maps magnitudes to areas, which are notoriously hard for the human mind to compare. Each point on the Richter scale indicates an increase of magnitude of 32 times. Using a screenshot from the animation, I’ve confirmed this ratio:

Another visualization that uses areas to show magnitudes is The Hive Group’s interactive Earthquake treemap:

This application is a rich data-mining tool, but it doesn’t necessarily negate the animation. The animation tells a story. It is focused on making a dramatic point. The application allows multiple stories to be discovered, in non-dramatic fashion.

Like Munroe’s Radiation Dose chart, the attempt to show geometric scale through changing units ultimately fails as a visual device. You can work through the Money chart point by point, but to find an overarching message  – other than “that’s a lot of money” — you have to replace visual intuition with a mental scale.

Corresponding to the scale problem is a comparison problem. Munroe assembles his square building blocks into all manner of shapes, including time-series charts and maps. The mosaic that results thoroughly fills the page while simultaneously making simple comparisons very difficult. Nothing lines up.

Yet the chart repays the effort it takes to meander about with a wealth of facts, some valiant attempts at creating context and broad connections, and numerous humorous asides.

But then Google released its redesign of Reader, and we went from this:

to this:

[Image credits: SheGeeks.net]

Google calls the design “cleaner, faster, and nicer to look at.”  But after reading their announcement more closely, it’s really more about creating a tighter integration with Google+ by turning off Reader’s friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality. Which is okay, since I do see the point of consolidating Reader’s social aspect with Google+. But the redesign has actually made sharing harder, not easier. Former Google Reader Product Manager Brian Shih puts it this way:

Keep in mind that on top of requiring 3-4 times as many clicks, you also now must +1 a post publicly to share it, even if it’s shared to a private circle. That bears repeating. The next time you want to share some sexy halloween costumes with your private set of friends, you first must publicly +1 the post, which means it shows up on your profile, plus wherever the hell G+ decides to use +1 data. So much for building a network around privacy controls.

But then later, an update:

It turns out there is a way to share without +1′ing first. If you click on the top right “Share…” field on the OneGoogle bar [the bar at the very top of the pane], you can bypass the +1 button. It’s just completely undiscoverable.

Sounds like a dark pattern to me.

But let’s put Google+ aside, since sharing wasn’t why I used Reader in the first place. It was about the content. How quickly can I see what’s new and get to an individual story? From an information design perspective, I’d think making the design cleaner would mean maximizing space for original content. Rather it seems they did the opposite, with a thicker/more spacious header bar that pushes content further down the page.

From a visual design standpoint, greeted by a new absence of color, I wondered if they were trying to make it look like a traditional newspaper, removing colored elements as if they were distractions? While there is such a thing as too much color, the new Reader goes overboard in the other direction. With black, white, and grey being the dominant scheme, it’s hard to tell what the priority is in the UI. Google even eliminated the use of the bright blue link color that facilitates scanning.  Now nothing stands out–except for the bright red Subscribe button and the blue Search button.  Maybe it’s time to revisit the pluses of eye candy.

Kvetching aside, I suppose I will get used to the new direction (assuming I don’t switch feeds first).  I also guess I had better brace myself for the upcoming Gmail redesign.

Jacob Gube offers a splendid appreciation of this splendid character covering history, styling, encoding, and what not to do:

(Apologies to our Facebook fans, who are getting this twice.)

Via artist and architect Jesen Tanadi (originally from desprezivel). You can view Tanadi’s projects at his eponymous URL.

From the individual’s point of view, a location may have boundaries, barriers, corridors, or an orientation that a street or geographical map doesn’t reveal.

Make sure to look at the project’s PDF presentation for some additional explanation and a series of interesting analytical maps that correspond to the issues listed above.

What does the mental map of your locale look like?