Insight

ICYMI – Weekly roundup of best bits Vol. 3

Missing your weekly infographic and data viz fix? Fear not, ICYMI, the infogr8 team have curated some of the best bits we’ve stumbled on this week.

Map out your favourite films

Musement

With both the BAFTA and Oscar award evenings imminent, movie fever is sweeping the world and the infogr8 office. Musement has put together an interactive global map pinpointing the filming locations of Oscar winners and box office hits spanning 65 years. Some of the settings could even surprise the biggest film buffs, who knew that Wayne Manor was actually an Elizabethan mansion in Nottingham, or that Alice wasn’t actually in Wonderland, she had fallen down a rabbit hole and ended up in Cornwall?

Out of School Children

UNESCO

Roughly 58 million children between the ages of 6 and 11 are out of school globally, and worryingly we are told that progress on reducing this number has all but stopped. An interactive visualisation created by FFunction for UNESCO makes this statistic painfully real. Rather than relying on charts and figures, we see hundreds of animated children scurrying back and forth across our screen, forming clusters to provide visual representations of the numbers affected. By raising awareness through projects like this, we are hopeful that as many children as possible will benefit from an education in the future.

How Americans Get to Work

Flowing Data

We Brits always love to moan about something, and if it isn’t the weather it’s our unreliable public transport. It would appear that things aren’t much better across the pond, as demonstrated by FlowingData’s interactive map on how Americans get to work. Driving alone is the preferred option for the vast majority, with only those in New York and Washington, D.C. feeling they can rely on public transportation. We can explore the data more deeply by adjusting the toggles above the map, and we see working from home is a popular option for many in the midwest. It turns out you can tell a lot about a place by the way people move about.

Taster

BBC

We are always excited to see what the BBC has in their digital store and they never cease to delight us! This week, BBC have launched the BBC Taster – digital space for new ideas and emerging technologies where users can try out new interactive nuggets, give feedback and share. We think this platform is a product of their effort to get closer to the digital natives getting them involved in experimental content. We have to admit, some ideas are ingenious, our favourites being R1OT – an opinion tool which enables you to become a part of the Radio 1 virtual tribe and influence what happens on air; and Doctor Who: Strax News, an interactive field report from the TARDIS. Geek alert!

DELI 

Anna Kolk

Move over Trip Advisor, there’s a new kid in town to steal your crown! Deli is an interactive site which tailors your travel guide based on a quick test about your preferences. Designed by Anna Kolk, founder of Amsterdam creative agency Perspektive Crossmedia and hospitality branding consultancy The Hotel Lab, this little website is set on a mission to put the user in the focus and tailor their experience by their own preferences, not what other people think. Although still in beta and only covering Amsterdam, this new fresh approach on travel guides looks very promising. There certainly are huge opportunities in this space and a lot of room for opening up new features to give savvy travellers the ultimate tool to conquer the world.

Maps that you can hear and touch 

Laura Bliss

Image credit: dirkb86

Information designers like ourselves must carefully consider the needs of the colourblind and visually impaired on a daily basis, however there are others striving to take accessibility to the next level. Maps that users can navigate through touch and sound alone are being pioneered to help blind people make sense of the world, and makes us think about visualisations in an entirely different light.

TECH TRENDS 2015

frog

With CES done and dusted for another year, the techies here at infogr8 have been left pondering what technological marvels will be revolutionising our lives in 2015 and beyond. The folks at frog have made this easier by compiling fifteen predictions from leading visionaries. From smart textiles to 4D printing, there’s plenty to consider and get excited about, and we can even rate the likelihood of each trend taking over our lives in the near future. Unfortunately there’s no mention of a self-charging mobile phone. Still, there’s always next year.

US blizzard: Charting the snow depth – using six dogs

Franz Strasser

We’ve come across some unusual units of measure in our time, but we have never seen snow depth measured in dogs before. That was before we saw a BBC article this week reporting on the recent snow in Boston, which apparently reached a depth of a fully grown German Shepherd. We just feel sorry for those poor Chihuahua that were taken out for walkies that day.

Seen a data viz nugget you’ve liked? Give us a shout @infogr8 and if it makes the cut, we’ll feature it in our next roundup! Till next week..