Archives: article
Search: from tool to content platform
There is a shift happening in search. In my last post, I argued that web content is becoming more decentralized, with aggregators (RSS readers, search engines, and social networks) playing an increasingly large role for the way in which we absorb information online, and that this tendency presents new opportunities for the design of information. [...]
Design and the decentralization of web content
Websites are the predominant platform for most of the information we absorb. Of course, the site itself isn’t always the primary vehicle, with RSS having established itself as an alternate form of consumption, and search engines offering a similar yet broader form of aggregation. This has lead to two main content experiences. In one mode, [...]
Observations on media and site
As sited media becomes more pervasive, it is also increasingly seamless. Integrated with architecture, it no longer appears as a singular anomaly or product, and instead as an interpretive layer—draped over the physical landscape and augmenting our experience of the concrete and tangible. Unlike location-aware mobile media, sited media has the potential to not merely [...]
Visualization and rhetoric redux
A chart depicting the health plan proposed by the House Democrats has recently come to the forefront of the media. It is hard to overlook the rhetorical bias of this visualization—with almost comical overstatement and unnecessary visual complexity it depicts the proposed heath care system through a flow chart consisting of an entangled mess of [...]
Three New York Times visualizations
Given that the New York Times Graphics Department is a winner in this year’s National Design Awards, it seemed opportune to look back at some of its recent work. Over the past few years, the Times has published many excellent interactive visualizations as counterparts to the equally brilliant static information graphics found in the paper, [...]