Comments for Mick McQuaid

Comment on A timeslider centered app by Mick

Mick — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:32:40 +0000

test

Comment on A two-part app for planning and driving by Elizabeth B.

Elizabeth B. — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:09:42 +0000

I really like the simplicity of the second option. I don’t want to know anything except where the big target areas are to drive to, and the size of the circle gives that away here. (Color, I believe, was whether more spots are opening up or filling up.) It would be great for it to do the verbal navigation thing automatically to the closest (or largest?) target area to your present location.

Comment on A mobile app mixing time and location by Wen-Hui K.

Wen-Hui K. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:49:47 +0000

In this visualization, we used 3 representational elements: color, saturation, and size. There were 4 colors indicating numbers of available parking spots. As red usually meant warning and stop, we used it to represent that there were only less than 3 available parking spots. We used green to represent there were over 40 available parking spots because green usually meant fresh, ok to go (same as the traffic light).
In terms of saturation, we used it to indicate if that struture was at its peak time. High saturation meant they were at their peak time, and vice versa.
We can see from the picture that there were many sqares indicating the parking structures, which were located in the actual geographic locations. The size of the structure represented the capacity each structure could be occupied. Thus, the bigger the structure, the more it could accommodate cars.
There was a time slider at the bottom of the screen, which showed how the color and saturation changed over time. It may be a prediction in the future or history for user to trace back.
The pin meant the destination and the dotted-line circle meant the radius of a certain miles.

Comment on A color-focused app by Matthew A.

Matthew A. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:28:45 +0000

The goal of our app is to show, at a glance, parking availability, how availability has changed over a short period of time, and other relevant information like price and lot closing time.

We show parking availability using a spectrum from dark green to white. Darker green means a high percentage of spots are available. As a lot fills up, it will get progressively lighter until it’s white, indicating it’s full. We reinforce the color coding by also showing the actual number of spots available. An animation (similar to a weather radar) will show the rate at which a lot is filling up so users will be able to judge whether a lot that appears empty will still have spots remaining by the time they arrive. Lots closing within an hour have a red outline, closed lots are shaded red, and price is indicated by dollar sign icons ($ = cheap, $$$$ = expensive).

Comment on An app that pushes preference-based info by Jeremy C.

Jeremy C. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:51:21 +0000

In short, while it does feature a map similar to others, this application is different from the others in that it allows site users to register a phone (for SMS) or email address and then sends them a notification if the lot they generally use is full, before they leave the house.

Our premise was that many users of the site are commuters and therefore likely frequent parkers in the downtown area, and being creatures of habit, likely go to the same garage, if they can help it. This app takes the site’s parking lot data (spots filled, lot capacity), as well as user parking preference data (Times and days of the week commuted, preferred lot) and automatically notifies the user when their preferred lot is approaching capacity. We initially envisioned that it would only notify the user when the lot was approaching capacity, and not otherwise, but a commenter wisely pointed out that if the site did push the text message in both cases (plenty of spaces or approaching capacity), it could be used as an alarm for the morning commute, as well as give feedback that the system was functioning properly.

Our simple take on the problem of how to best make use of the Ann Arbor parking lot data is modeled after the website umbrellatoday.com, which reduces weather reports to a text message sent to its users only days with rain in the forecast for their zipcode, notifying them that they should probably bring an umbrella. Notably, if widely used, this could also give the parking lot authority valuable data on demand, commute times and user preferences, which may be useful in planning for future lot management.

(Mouly and Taeho and myself made this)

Comment on A timeslider centered app by Kathryn M.

Kathryn M. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:16:04 +0000

So the point here is that we would have two views - a map-based view that could integrate with a GPS system, and the bar chart above that might be web-based (or available from a mobile device). In the map-based view, parking structures appear as rectangles with a certain level of color saturation; the more the saturation, the more parking spots available. Some other teams questioned this, thinking that more saturation gave it a full appearance, like it was full of cars. Some others said they thought our method made sense, so it’s a toss-up. Hovering over the garages would give additional information like the relative cost (maybe using $$ symbols), and how many spots are available right now.

The second view represents parking structure trends over time. The garages are represented on the x-axis, and the y-axis represents the number of spots available. A time slider (here shown at the top) allows users to scroll through the hours of the day and watch the ‘average’ # of spots increase and decrease. Users can also choose to narrow their search by selecting only weekdays, only weekends, or only certain days of the week from the drop-down in the upper left.

Here again there were questions about the units on the y-axis - we represented spaces available, but others thought that perhaps it should be spaces used. There was a little discussion around this, but in the end I think people agreed that spaces available made the most sense, since it makes more prominent those parking garages that you are in fact trying to find.

Comment on Visualization beyond the Desktop by Leanna G.

Leanna G. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:12:31 +0000

The CrystalEyes setup seems like a bad idea. On the surface, it’s an innovative and interesting approach to the problem, but it seems like there are technical issues with it. Firstly, epileptics would have serious problems with this. Secondly, this is pushing my understanding of how display technology works, but I’m not sure this is completely effective. One issue is that it seems it would necessarily divide the refresh rates by however many people were using the system, and viewing refresh rates under 75hz gives many people headaches. A low enough refresh rate may be simply unusable. But again, I’m not up on my display technology, and perhaps newer HDTVs can compensate for this somehow. And beyond all that, the glasses and the display would always have to be perfectly in sync to work well.

Of course, a Google search reveals that they pulled it off and they’re marketing the glasses for $600/ea and apparently this can be used with a HDTV for about $5000, and can support “any number” of participants.

Beyond all that, it doesn’t seem like an elegant solution to this problem. It is indeed a sticky problem to show private information in a public context, but I don’t know that clunky headgear is the way to go.

Comment on Prototyping InfoViz by Mick

Mick — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:38:25 +0000

This is a test comment.

Comment on Organizing Representation Characteristics by Michael N.

Michael N. — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:18:19 +0000

I think I may have finally realized some of the utility of the treemap, by playing with the mouse-over in the periodic table of visualization. It is fairly clear, even without seeing the periodic table, that there is a very high density of information to space that is possible with treemaps, but I just could not SEE how that utility equates to the dynamic potentials of the visualization field until the mouse-over. I’m sure the treemap has more dynamic power to it than that of the periodic table + mouse-over function, but that was my necessary moment to stack the information density with dynamically focused layering of information. The periodic table of visualizations shares some visual metaphor with the structure of the treemaps in such a way that, coupled with the mouse-over function I started to see how the information density can have a value in and of itself that can be intensified further by introducing user-controlled focusing on specificities within the information density.

I’m not about to give up on the notion that there is still something very… static… about imprisoning information in a little prison block of rectangles, even rectangles of varying colors and sizes, but I also finally, reluctantly, bow my head to the comprehensibility and density it achieves.

The fact that I spent an afternoon and an evening drawing stacks of rectangles and filling them with Sonic and Mario characters, and then adding yet more little rectangles may have something to do with it, as well.

In reaction to Anna’s comment, I also think there was something of memories of a favorite, old Jr. high school biology teacher in my willingness to accept that particular visual metaphor. The fact that my genuine, chemistry-literate comprehension of the periodic table is VERY limited might well, however, also play a part in my finding the visual metaphor useful, rather than confusing.

Comment on Organizing Representation Characteristics by Urmila K.

Urmila K. — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:18:01 +0000

Personally, I found the Periodic Table of Visualization methods slightly confusing. Although it brings back sweet memories of the Periodic Table of elements (in which elements are organized by atomic number), I could not see how the methods are organized in the Periodic Table of Visualization other than the general classification into Information, Data, Strategy etc. I also thought the “Divergent” thinking and “Convergent” thinking added to the confusion. The examples on hovering are great though. But now I am wondering how useful the table would it be if I had a printed copy (which I do and it looks pretty on my wall but I’ve never got a chance to use it). I may not be able to fully appreciate the table because I haven’t really explored / used it enough.