Visualization and the Joy of Revelation

Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg explore the joy of revelation: the special electricity of seeing a city from the air, of hearing a secret, of watching a lover undress. Using data visualization, a technology developed by computer scientists to extract insights from raw numbers they show what happens when technology is aimed at data sets that range from tropical storms to social networks, from arguments on Wikipedia to expressions of carnal desire.
Viégas and Wattenberg investigate the art and science of visualization. They lead Google's "Big Picture" visualization research group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before joining Google, the two founded the studio Flowing Media, Inc. and, at IBM, created the ground-breaking public visualization platform Many Eyes. Viégas is known for her pioneering depictions of chat histories and email. Wattenberg's visualizations of the stock market and baby names are considered Internet classics. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, is in the collection of the NY Museum of Modern Art, and has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live.