walterra

I’m happy to share some tidbits from a project I’ve been involved in lately. I was responsible for leading the data visualization team working on the FP7 project ASAP (Adaptive Scalable Analytics Platform). The system we developed is capable of visualizing aggregated information on millions of tweets and overlay it with additional data like telecommunication data (e.g. cell tower usage). Here’s a screencast demonstrating some of the features:

High-performance rendering of geographic maps – @ASAP_EU visual analytics dashboard https://t.co/0GV4hJeVv4 #BigData @D3js_org @webLyzard pic.twitter.com/J6QZJAAiBr

— ASAP FP7 Project (@ASAP_EU) March 22, 2017

Here’s another weekly recap with some findings worth mentioning.

Aaron Marcus‘ MuC 2011 Keynote

I had the chance to see Aaron Marcus‘ last year at HCI in Las Vegas. In this video he’s giving another great talk on HCI in Science Fiction movies and how sci-fi HCI relates to real developments and vice versa.

Apple Knowledge Navigator

Aaron mentions briefly some company promotion videos envisioning future developments. I didn’t know this video by Apple from 1987, a concept sort of resembling an iPad prototype including Siri, 20 years before its actual inception. I wonder if there are social or gender studies on how companies envision technology innovation and how actual implementations affect our own work and behavior (or actually don’t change us). Like the desktop metaphor (which took even Apple years and years to abandon it in the context of tablets but MSFT is still struggling with it), the video presents a secretary metaphor. So while they present technological innovation, the idea of a visual personal virtual assistant just maps current hierarchical working structures (e.g. you still get the feeling someone is working for you like a secretary).

That’s it for this week :)