Both Klein and Kaufman wrestle with the idea of transforming archives into information that is quantifiable, visual and meaningful. This approach to interpreting the data available in their respective archives serves to\u00a0illuminate the\u00a0nuances of the information\u00a0that otherwise goes missed. \u00a0For Klein, this was the significance of the relationship between Jefferson and James Hemings. She accomplishes this through a novel arc-graph depicting Jefferson’s communications with those closest to him and distantly connected to him.\u00a0Kaufman, comparatively, illustrates the big topics, timeline and the players that made\u00a0up\u00a0Kissinger’s foreign policy through various force-directed diagrams and line and bar graphs. Both strategies, however, beg the question: How can these tools be of use to us if they are not “user friendly” or easily interpreted?<\/p>\n
Upon first look, these visualizations have the potential to be detrimentally\u00a0misinterpreted, even insofar as to negate their purpose. This is especially the case when the conclusions illustrated by the visualizations are not well conveyed or illustrated. In the case of Klein’s arc graph, one could see\u00a0the person farthest connected to Jefferson, with the “widest” arc diameter, as the person\u00a0with whom Jefferson most frequently corresponded regarding Hemings. Similarly, without understanding the meanings of the groupings, distances, lines and colors in Kaufman’s force-directed diagrams, the information provided by the visualization is rendered as meaningless as the overwhelming archive itself.<\/p>\n
Even if these clarifications cannot be made apparent endogenously, they merit a key or an explanation outside of the visualization. While both Klein’s and Kaufman’s work serves to make large archives more user-friendly and meaningful, they have not gone far enough. Their insights are only as meaningful as they are accessible. We interacted with this idea in ‘The Library of Babel,” where information was existent albeit useless due to its disorganization and lack of availability. Data historians to come will have to discover new ways to not only visualize data but make the user experience as clear, aesthetic and evocative\u00a0as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Both Klein and Kaufman wrestle with the idea of transforming archives into information that is quantifiable, visual and meaningful. This approach to interpreting the data available in their respective archives serves to\u00a0illuminate the\u00a0nuances of the information\u00a0that otherwise goes missed. \u00a0For Klein, this was the significance of the relationship between Jefferson and James Hemings. She accomplishes … Continue reading The Customer Service of Data Visualization<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-4","category-responders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}