Coding Free Visualisation

Coding Free Visualisation - WOW!

Today I stumbled across some similar tools that really help with visualisation. They take the approach that you start drawing and then attach attributes of your drawing to data (typically an uploaded .csv file).

To get an idea of the field, Adobe have Project Lincoln, which is fun to watch, but with Adobe products I often discount them because they aren't cheap and readily available as a teaching resource. The video has lots of whooping, but shows the concept well.

The tool that has blown my socks off is Charticulator because I was able to upload .csv of trees that contains lat/long information and make this. Not only can you "see" the line of trees along University Road, the trees are coloured according to species and the heights are mapped to the heights in the data.

Still a novice with the tool, I wondered how I might create a key, so I created a new visualisation that mapped the Y value to species and the X value to maturity of the tree and the height to height, and got this, which turned out to be an interesting visualisation in its own right, revealing different aspects about the distribution of age ranges of trees.

Other tools in a similar vein, but with which I had less success, but to be fair, I haven't spent much time with were:

Data Illustrator

...and...

Data Driven Guides. Here's an article about it and here is the tool (beta I believe)

Conclusion

All of these tools have the same concept behind them, and after minutes of testing they all look worthy of deeper exploration. I'd recommend you watch the introductory videos, they're short and explain how to get started. I tried without the videos intros and failed to make anything useful.

Comments

Inserting A Google Doc link into a Google Spreadsheet (UPDATED 6/12/2017)

This article looks at using Apps Script to add new features to a Google Spreadsheet. At the University of York, various people have been using Google spreadsheets to collect together various project related information. We've found that when collecting lots of different collaborative information from lots of different people that a spreadsheet can work much better than a regular Google Form. Spreadsheets can be better than Forms for data collection because: The spreadsheet data saves as you are editing. If you want to fill in half the data and come back later, your data will still be there. The data in a spreadsheet is versioned, so you can see who added what and when and undo it if necessary The commenting features are brilliant - especially the "Resolve" button in comments. One feature we needed was to be able to "attach" Google Docs to certain cells in a spreadsheet. It's easy to just paste in a URL into a spreadsheet cell, but they can often

Writing a Simple QR Code Stock Control Spreadsheet

At Theatre, Film & TV they have lots of equipment they loan to students, cameras, microphone, tripod etc. Keeping track of what goes out and what comes back is a difficult job. I have seen a few other departments struggling with the similar "equipment inventory" problems. A solution I have prototyped uses QR codes, a Google Spreadsheet and a small web application written in Apps Script. The idea is, that each piece of equipment ( or maybe collection of items ) has a QR code on it. Using a standard and free smartphone application to read QR codes, the technician swipes the item and is shown a screen that lets them either check the item out or return it. The QR app looks like this. The spreadsheet contains a list of cameras. It has links to images and uses Google Visualisation tools to generate its QR codes. The spreadsheet looks like this. The Web Application The web application, which only checks items in or out and should be used on a phone in conjunctio

A Working Booking System In Google Sheets

Working with Andras Sztrokay we had another go at a booking system. This time it was to enable staff to book out a number of iPads over a number of days. You select the days you want, then select the Booking menu. Andras did an amazing job. It even creates a daily bookings sheet so you can see who has which iPads. To see this in action, go here and File > Make a Copy (I won't be able to support you this is just provided to maybe give someone else a leg up, good luck!)

Collaborative Tools Project

Search This Blog