Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Information Design
originally posted at BoingBoing,
The ESA and NASA released a colorful, musical video of the Huygens probe landing on Saturn's moon Titan. The BoingBoing reader who sent in the link mentioned that the video follows some of Edward Tufte's principles for displaying complex information, which prompted me to hunt down some of Tufte's books.
Tufte writes about the 'smallest effective difference' in Visual Explanations:
Relevant to nearly every display of data, the smallest effective difference is the Occam's razor ("what can be done with fewer is done in vain with more") of information design. And often the happy consequence of an economy of means is a graceful richness of information, for small differences allow more differences.
The scientists managed to pack 4 hours of multivariable data into 5 minutes on small screen in such a way that an average viewer can get a sense of what is going on. The ability to produce videos like this, which come closer to inviting outside viewers rather than repelling them, might mean the difference in making projects interesting or relevant to nonscientists.
Some of the many differences in the video include:
The cameras capturing images of the surface flash a solid color when they are updated, which indicates what resolution and kind of image has been taken.
A dynamic silhouette of the probe and parachute with a person's height for scale.
A small display of the probe's path of descent onto the surface with the height of Mt Everest for scale.
The sound that accompanies - tones from the left speaker correspond to the speed and tilt of the parachute and more on the probe's descent, unique tones from the right speaker correspond to incoming data from the 13 different sensors on the probe.
COMMENT:Mike LoveEMAIL: [email protected]: 10.10.13.120URL: "