Information is a higher order projection of data, which in turn is a higher order projection of phenomena. Phenomena are seldom static or isolated. The more accurate representation of information is, in principle at least, the more it should communicate tendencies of change as well as contextual relations.
There is only so much a single, static, bar- or pie- chart can do. How else can complex information and data structures be represented and communicated?
Enter the animated graph, or aniGraph.
But that is just the start, obviously animating the change in values over time makes sense, in a linear kind of way. From a user’s perspective it may make even more sense to animate the structure and form of representation interactively, especially where the investigation and navigation of complexly structured information is concerned.
This would entail a synthesis of user centred front-end functionality and graphic adaptability integrated with elementary computational intelligence. The Macromedia Flash environment (from about version 4 upwards) should suffice for the essence of such a system.
One Comment
may just have to get my hands dirty with some statistics :- )