Φ Pardalis Data Ownership Blog

As a follow-up to Moritz Stefaner's 2007 master's thesis, Visual tools for the socio–semantic web, as highlighted in Elastic Tag Mapping and Data Ownership, I am blogging here another noteworthy thesis coming out of the same university.

The Form of Facts and Figures is an unpublished master's thesis presented in early May, 2008 by Christian Behrens at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, Department of Design.

"The topic of my Master thesis project is the development of a design taxonomy for data visualization and information design. In its core, the project consists of a collection of 55 design patterns that describe the functional aspects of graphic components for the display, behavior and user interaction fo complex infographics. The thesis [when made available will be] in the form of a 200-page book that additionally includes a profound historical records of information design as well as an introduction into the research field of design patterns."

There is a slide-show presentation of parts of his unpublished book at niceone.org.

In the meantime Behrens has currently posted 26 visualization examples from his thesis coupled with descriptions, layouts, implementations and real-world examples to a separate, well-designed website called Information Design Patterns. These very interesting data visualizations run the gamut from Thread Arcs to Data Tips to Stacked Area Charts to Facet Browsing to the following Bubble Chart ....

Information Design Patterns website

Again, but this time essentially in Behrens own words, this website is a design pattern browser consisting of a set of modules that reflect the characteristics of the pattern systematics described in his thesis, and providing the user with a set of useful tools to navigate and explore the collection.