Jesse H. Kriss

ManyEyes: a Site for Visualization at Internet Scale

We describe the design and deployment of Many Eyes, a public Web site where users may upload data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on discussions. The goal of the site is to support collaboration around visualizations at a large scale by fostering a social style of data analysis in which visualizations not only serve as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a medium to spur discussion among users. To support this goal, the site includes novel mechanisms for end-user creation of visualizations and asynchronous collaboration around those visualizations. In addition to describing these technologies, we provide a preliminary report on the activity of our users.

Harry Potter and the Meat-Filled Freezer: A Case Study of Spontaneous Usage of Visualization Tools

This paper is a report on early user activity in Many Eyes, a public web site where users may upload data, create visualizations, and carry on discussions. Since the site launched, users have uploaded data and created graphics on everything from DNA microarray data to co-occurrences of names in the New Testament to personal gift-giving networks. Our results show that in addition to traditional data analysis, Many Eyes is used for goals ranging from journalism and advocacy to personal expression and social interaction. We propose several implications of this usage for visualization designers and contend that these findings suggest a role for visualization as an expressive medium.