This position will be responsible for conceptual design of data visualization projects and infographics. If you like the artistic side of data, this is a dream job.

Ideal candidates will be resourceful, creative, detailed, and have a desire to work in a small business setting.  We are a boutique design firm, not a large agency. Fascination with data, logic, and statistics is much more important than volume of experience.

Candidates must have experience in requirements gathering, whiteboard ....]]> We are currently looking for a UX Designer to join us in doing good with data. Qualified people will have 2+ years experience with strategic thinking.

This position will be responsible for conceptual design of data visualization projects and infographics. If you like the artistic side of data, this is a dream job.

Ideal candidates will be resourceful, creative, detailed, and have a desire to work in a small business setting.  We are a boutique design firm, not a large agency. Fascination with data, logic, and statistics is much more important than volume of experience.

Candidates must have experience in requirements gathering, whiteboard drawing, wireframe creation, and clear communication. Some familiarity with Tableau software (public or desktop) would be wonderful, but is not required. This position will be responsible for the strategic thinking related to web-based applications and potentially mobile applications.

Please email your résumé, links to recent work/portfolio, and include the following:

1. Describe how you feel about data.
2. Tell us your favorite UX design tool, and why.
3. Tell us your compensation requirements.

This is a full-time, on-site salaried position that includes medical benefits, sick leave, and paid holidays. Unfortunately, we cannot offer relocation compensation, so please consider that if you apply from out of state.

Periscopic is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Compensation based on experience.

You can learn more about us on our web site.

This position will be responsible for creating original interface and data presentation designs, applying design styles and ideas to un-designed sections of existing projects, and creating infographics. Will work directly with our Head of Visual Design to refine ideas and create new layouts.

Ideal candidates will be extremely creative, patient, observant, and have a desire to work in a small business ....]]> We’re looking for a Visual Designer to join our amazing team. Qualified people have 2-6 years web experience specifically with interface design and web-related projects. Must be very well organized, well spoken, and able to quickly follow creative direction.

This position will be responsible for creating original interface and data presentation designs, applying design styles and ideas to un-designed sections of existing projects, and creating infographics. Will work directly with our Head of Visual Design to refine ideas and create new layouts.

Ideal candidates will be extremely creative, patient, observant, and have a desire to work in a small business setting.  We are a boutique design firm, not a large agency. Fascination with data, logic, and visual precision is much more important than volume of experience.

Candidates must be proficient in the Adobe Creative suite and MS Office, and should also possess some familiarity with online development technologies such as HTML5/HTML, and CSS.

Please email your resume, links to recent work/portfolio, and include the following:

1. Your expectations for the position of Visual Designer.
2. The most important things you feel a Visual Designer does.
3. Describe the roles a Visual Designer plays through the many phases of a project.
4. Your salary requirements.

This is a full-time, on-site salaried position that includes medical benefits, sick leave, and paid holidays. Unfortunately we cannot offer relocation compensation, so please consider that if you apply from out of state.

Periscopic is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Compensation based on experience.

You can learn more about us on our web site.

Though we had some initial trepidation about how we might have to compromise the richness of detail that we had come to expect using Flash as a development platform, the sacrifices of switching to HTML5 were hardly as significant as we’d feared.

In some ways, it actually helped us refine our development methodology, and definitely broadened our understanding of what is possible when deploying to multiple target platforms.

Visualizing Yahoo!

Earlier this year we released ....]]> Over the past year we’ve had the good fortune to work on a number of substantial HTML5 sites, developed specifically to be viewed on the iPad.

Though we had some initial trepidation about how we might have to compromise the richness of detail that we had come to expect using Flash as a development platform, the sacrifices of switching to HTML5 were hardly as significant as we’d feared.

In some ways, it actually helped us refine our development methodology, and definitely broadened our understanding of what is possible when deploying to multiple target platforms.

Visualizing Yahoo!

Earlier this year we released two large-scale data visualizations for Yahoo!, each developed in HTML5. For the most part, the performance and general usability of each is similar to what it might have been if we had developed them in Flash.

There were specific areas where we needed to alter the design to address the limitations of HTML5, but overall these were minor. We’ll be adding two additional visualizations to visualize.yahoo.com by June.

Politilines

We also used HTML5 in Politilines.com, a tool designed to allow visitors to explore the words spoken in the recent Republican Primary debates.

Highlighting specific candidates reveals the frequency of use for specific words within the overall debate subjects. Individual words or topics can also be explored to see how often they were used, and by whom.

An archive of all Republican debates is available, and the tool will support the coming debates between President Obama and his challenger.

UNICEF

To help support UNICEF’s launch of their flagship yearly assessment, the State of the World’s Children, we developed a map that details the increasing global urban populations from 1950-2050, and allows visitors to explore information for over 100 countries.

To add further context for the report, we developed a Facebook application that helps you to imagine what it would be like to be growing up as one of these children, as seen through the filter of your own Facebook friends.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Our latest release, designed and developed for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a tool that allows the general public to explore the Foundation’s grantmaking efforts over the last 10 years.

Visitors can explore grants and grant dollars in many ways, including by region, program area, or areas of support.

The tool presents the information in the form of dollar volume and grant volume, as well as details each grant, supplemental grant, and provides information about the organizations who received them.

Developing HTML5 content to target the iPad isn’t the easiest way to start your exploration of this new blend of technologies, as there are several ways that browser-based implementations do not work in the tablet environment, including sound implementation and rollovers.

However, if your project can support the extra time needed to create an immersive HTML5 project, you should give it a try. From an outside perspective, it can be difficult to tell it apart from Flash.

In fact, when our CEO Kim visited the CommArts offices this year to judge the Interactive Annual competition, she found herself viewing the technical details of most of the sites in the competition because it was so hard to tell one technology from the other.

Last year we explored the audience reach of HTML5 vs. Flash when used for developing a large-scale data visualization project. Our research also explored the impact that the iPad was having on these development platforms, and if you haven’t seen that discussion, you can find it here.

Since it’s been about 10 months since that research, we’ve decided to revisit ....]]> Support for HTML5 has come a long way in the past year, and these days it’s difficult to tell it apart from Flash. It’s changing the way people think about online content, but is it right for your project?

Last year we explored the audience reach of HTML5 vs. Flash when used for developing a large-scale data visualization project. Our research also explored the impact that the iPad was having on these development platforms, and if you haven’t seen that discussion, you can find it here.

Since it’s been about 10 months since that research, we’ve decided to revisit this topic and outline some of the things we’ve discovered as a result of deploying several large-scale HTML5 projects over the course of the last year.

When we originally researched this topic, our focus was placed on exploring the largest audience segment that could be reached with each technology. At that time, Flash was a hands-down winner, with a potential to reach almost 60% more visitors than HTML5.

These days, the story is a little different.

You can select any of the images in this post to see our entire collected research in infographic form. A breakdown of each section, with some additional thoughts about what we learned, is below.

Browser Market Share

The most obvious thing you notice when looking at the data about technology compatibility is that if you are interested in developing a visualization that can be used on the greatest number of web browsers, it’s still pretty hard to compete with Flash.

As of March 2012, Flash is supported by 99% of the available web browsers, and 50% support HTML5. While the numbers for Flash didn’t change, this is a 10% increase for HTML5 since May of 2011. That’s impressive, but it’s still not a majority, and probably something to consider if your main goal is compatibility.

Mobile browsers are gaining acceptance, and browsers supporting iOS made a jump in market share from 1% to 6%. We added browsers that support Android to this category, and when combined with those that support iOS, they only make up 8% of all available web browsers. This is obviously growing, but if you want to reach a lot of people, consider this number before designing an entire campaign around the need to be shown on tablet or mobile devices.

Potential Audiences

After looking at how the technologies were supported on current browsers, we calculated how many people would be able to view the visualization, using each technology. The maximum audience that would be able to view an HTML5 project is now about 1.04 billion people, about 1/2 of the 2.08 billion potential visitors that can see a site developed in Flash.

Interactive Features

The most important part of our research focused on the features that can be supported by each technology. A lot of people make the assumption that if their project will work on a mobile browser, it’ll work everywhere — and for the most part, this is true. However, in order to develop a piece that works on a mobile browser, you’ll have to sacrifice a bit of functionality.

We chose to look at the features that would be most commonly used to develop a large data visualization, but could also apply to any major online development effort: the ability to dynamically draw things on screen, support 3D objects, work with vector-based objects, integrate video & audio, apply filter effects, integrate with APIs, and make network socket connections.

You’ll notice how the features become less supported in HTML5, and then even less so on iOS and Android. Overall, the iPad still has the greatest support for HTML5, but it’s only marginally better. A bigger influencer is processor performance and screen resolution, both of which vary to such a large degree in the current tablet market, that it is a considerable challenge to create a single responsive design solution without making significant compromises.

Select the image below to see a larger comparison:

Browsers by Market Share

The last thing we explored was the overall market share by browser types, and how HTML5-compatible each release version is. Most modern browsers can support HTML5, but keep in mind that a lot of large companies do not regularly update their web browsers, and can be one or two versions behind.

Since May of 2011, Chrome has increased its market share by 54%. That’s an impressive jump, and especially good news for HTML5, because Chrome is generally the most HTML5-friendly browser. Internet Explorer and Firefox decreased their market shares, by 19% and 15%, respectively.

Considerations

So what does this mean for your next project?

Flash

• Flash is an established and unified platform that reaches 99% of desktop and laptop browsers with a broad and consistent feature set matched with solid performance. Applications can be developed for Flash with fewer technical restrictions and greater speed than is currently possible in HTML5.
• The most significant drawback to developing with Flash is the lack of support for the plugin from Adobe. The company has stated that it will not support the mobile plug-in moving forward, and their dedication to the browser platform is questionable.
• Flash seems like a solid browser-based development option for the short-term, but the fact that even Adobe is offering options for HTML5 output, leads us to wonder about the viability of Flash as a long-term solution.

HTML5

• HTML5 is a synthesis of several new and existing technologies (primarily JavaScript, CSS3, Canvas, and SVG), and as such, has a broad potential developer base. It allows for the deployment of an immersive application in modern browsers that either do not, or cannot, have the Flash Plugin installed – most notably Safari for the iPad which has a screen size large enough to interact with an immersive application.
• The HTML5 development landscape is still somewhat lawless, and there are known inconsistencies between browser implementations of core features. Being an aggregate of technologies, it lacks an established and unified methodology, which can increase the development needed for cross-browser compatibility.

iOS & Android

• Among mobile devices and tablets, iOS and Android are the two major operating systems, and support a variety of browsers. For presentations that do not require complex drawing algorithms or rendering, they have greatly expanded the online content options.
• Unfortunately, the support of HTML5 on iOS and Android is still incomplete, specifically in the realm of communication and animation protocols. If you design a campaign with the intention of being displayed on a tablet or mobile device, you will likely need to create workarounds or alternate versions.

Conclusions

It’s been exciting to see the evolution of HTML5 support in the last 10 months. It’s a good new synthesis of technologies and has a lot of potential for growth. The fact that its core technologies are open source should indicate that it will be well supported and accessible, and it’s likely that its feature set will only increase.

However, if your goal is to develop content in HTML5 so that it can be viewed through both a web browser and tablet devices, (to reach the largest amount of people), you will likely need to work harder than you think. During the past year, our testing and debugging time has tripled from the time needed when working with Flash.

Plan accordingly: the inconsistency of browser support for HTML5 features, specifically among mobile devices, can easily add a significant amount of development time and budget to your project.

This is not to say that HTML5 development shouldn’t be done. Earlier this year we released two large-scale data visualizations for Yahoo!, each developed in HTML5. For the most part, the performance and general usability of each is similar to what it might have been if we had developed them in Flash. There were specific areas where we needed to alter the design to address the limitations of HTML5, but overall these were minor.

In May of 2011 we concluded that from a purely analytical point of view, the best option for developing a feature-rich dynamic data visualization was Flash. Today, it’s harder to say that’s still the case.

If your project can support the extra time needed to create an immersive HTML5 project, you should give it a try. From an outside perspective, it can be difficult to tell HTML5 apart from Flash.

Here’s a link to all of this research compiled in infographic form:

In our next post we’ll take a behind-the-scenes look at some of our recent high-profile HTML5 projects.

What do you think?  Do you have experience with HTML5? Leave a comment below, and let’s start a discussion.

We’ve had a subscription for many years and eagerly await the annuals, especially when we’ve have the good fortune to be included. The magazine and companion web site are well worth your investment, and definitely an essential for all who are interested in communication of all forms.

Once the judging started, the sobering reality kicked in as we all spent weeks reviewing and dissecting every website – big or small – that ....]]> When I received the invite to be on the jury for the 18th Communication Arts Interactive Annual I was so flattered that I immediately and enthusiastically accepted.

We’ve had a subscription for many years and eagerly await the annuals, especially when we’ve have the good fortune to be included. The magazine and companion web site are well worth your investment, and definitely an essential for all who are interested in communication of all forms.

Once the judging started, the sobering reality kicked in as we all spent weeks reviewing and dissecting every website – big or small – that any hopeful entrant thought was exceptional enough to enter. The contest received 1,194 entries, so you can imagine how the culling process works. It was exciting (albeit exhausting) to see all the new work out there.

After each of the jurors reviewed the work on their own, we all were flown to the Communication Arts offices in Menlo Park, CA for two days to deliberate the final winners. We were well pampered with plush accommodations, free flowing libations, and fantastic meals.  It was really great to meet Kelly Goto, Keith Butters, David Wright, Michael Potts, and Jeff Stafford of CommArts and learn about their criteria for judging this work, and to see how each of our perspectives came together to select the winners. I encourage you to spend some time reviewing the winning entries on the CommArts web site.

For those of you who might be looking for a little bit more behind the scenes look at my assessment of how the entrants broke down, here you go:

• Delusions of Grandeur: 10%
  A pleasant ecommerce site with a nice CSS theme. I’m sorry. Did you read the entry form? This is CommArts! Comm MF Arts!
• Technology as Novelty: 20%
  I’m pretty sure all these started with the client calling up and requesting something with augmented reality. I’m a fan of AR when it’s smart, useful, or otherwise well-considered. But printing a token so I can control the animated puppy on your site? Not so much.
• Nice Site: 50%
  But nothing to send mom a text about.
• Better than Average: 10%
  High attention to detail. Interesting. CommArts worthy? Borderline.
• Great: 5%
  Head and shoulders above the competition. Beautiful and engaging. Definitely make the cut.
• Speechless: 5%
  Innovative and transcendent. These few experiences were made by people who aren’t trying to get into CommArts. These are people who care about putting beauty, elegance, magic, and joy into the world.

Kudos to team CommArts for putting this out every year along with all their other wonderful annuals, and thank you very much for asking me to be part of the Interactive Annual this year.

The experience was only rivaled by the amazing onsite hospitality and support we all received.

Here’s the way they describe the conference:

Strata Conference offers the nuts-and-bolts of building ....]]> For those of you who haven’t been to an O’Reilly Strata conference yet, we encourage you to go. O’Reilly is doing a fantastic job of elevating the discussion about data and providing an environment for people to discuss, debate and learn.

Here’s the way they describe the conference:

Unprecedented computing power and connectivity are bringing new layers of experience to our lives: a change that brings both opportunity and the chal- lenge of new technologies and skills. The future belongs to those who understand how to collect and use their data successfully.

Strata Conference offers the nuts-and-bolts of building a data-driven business—the latest on the skills, tools, and technologies you need to make data work.

The conferences are a great chance to get together with a collection of really interesting and inspiring people who are all helping to shape the many new fields that have sprouted up in direct response to our rapidly increasing supply of data.

Last November our CEO Kim Rees attended one of the conferences in New York City, and while there, she was interviewed by Laurel Ruma the Director of Talent at O’Reilly Media.

Kim talks about why she attended the Strata conference, what inspires her, and how this impacts our work.

We recently partnered with UNICEF to help support the launch of their flagship yearly assessment, The State of the World’s Children. The 2012 report focuses on the inequalities children face in towns and cities around the world, and is a gripping assessment of the effect of urbanization on youth.

The report is extensive (156 pages) and contains excellent data on several topics, including population growth, children’s rights, migration, environmental and physical impacts, poverty, and education, among others. There are over one billion children living in urban poverty.

To help visualize some of this information, we used their global population data to map the growth ....]]>

We recently partnered with UNICEF to help support the launch of their flagship yearly assessment, The State of the World’s Children. The 2012 report focuses on the inequalities children face in towns and cities around the world, and is a gripping assessment of the effect of urbanization on youth.

The report is extensive (156 pages) and contains excellent data on several topics, including population growth, children’s rights, migration, environmental and physical impacts, poverty, and education, among others. There are over one billion children living in urban poverty.

To help visualize some of this information, we used their global population data to map the growth of over 100 countries around the world since 1950. We also projected the population growth to 2050, and visualized what percentage of each country’s total population is specifically urban.

The result is a simple, but effective visualization that demonstrates three somber points: global population rates are increasing, cities are expanding, but the world isn’t getting larger.

Working with an organization as large and globally established as UNICEF was a great experience for us for obvious reasons. It was also eye-opening, because they asked us to work very quickly, something we don’t typically do.

We developed the Urban World visualization in about two weeks, while we were also working on a companion Facebook application to put a different perspective on the report.

The whole project was done in less than four weeks, and for us, working that nimbly was a great reminder that you need to keep the importance of the message in front of whatever you do. Sometimes it’s just more important to make sure the message is widely available, and quickly.

To develop the Facebook application, we used statistics from the State of the World’s Children report to help people imagine what it would be like to be a child growing up in urban poverty today, as seen through the filter of their own Facebook friends.

We often make data visualization tools that allow visitors to sort, parse and explore the data in rich detail, but for this application we decided to take a different approach. We decided that the statistics were powerful enough and didn’t need a visual metaphor.

After thinking about it, we felt the most powerful method of presenting the information would be to create a way for people to put themselves in the place of the children, to imagine what their lives must be like. To imagine what it would be like if their friends were the ones they were reading about, instead of anonymous children in a far off country.

Being exposed to statistics like these, presented in a way that allows you to imagine and empathize, to feel, connect, and be compelled to want to talk about it, – that is a much better way to visualize this information than through any set of data exploration tools that we could have made, had we not been given what seemed like an impossible deadline.

So we’re grateful that we were asked to work outside of our comfort zone. We learned a lot, and gained a new perspective.

Sometimes, you just need to keep the importance of the message in front of whatever you do.

Yahoo is not what it used to be, but many parts of it are still alive and well. In a follow-up to their email interactive, Yahoo, along with visualization firm Periscopic, explores the popularity of articles that appear on the Yahoo homepage. It’s a visualization that shows activity within the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E. for short).

The focus is on the center, which has the same layout as that of the stories on the Yahoo homepage. Story on top, and ....]]> We’re excited to say that our latest visualization is also being featured on FlowingData.com. Take a look:

Yahoo is not what it used to be, but many parts of it are still alive and well. In a follow-up to their email interactive, Yahoo, along with visualization firm Periscopic, explores the popularity of articles that appear on the Yahoo homepage. It’s a visualization that shows activity within the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E. for short).

The focus is on the center, which has the same layout as that of the stories on the Yahoo homepage. Story on top, and links to more stories on the bottom. Except in the interactive, you can see demographics of those who viewed the story. The slider on the bottom lets you go back up to 24 hours to see what was hot during each hour.

It gets more fun when you use the buttons on the left and right to view popular stories among age and gender cohorts and button on the right that let you see stories by categories. The rotating particles, each representing a clickable story, in the background provide a final flourish.

Oh, and extra nerd points for HTML5.

You can see the whole post on flowingdata.com

Yahoo! recently released a dedicated data visualization website [yahoo.com] to highlight their Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.), a service that aims to personalize the Yahoo! experience depending on a collection of demographic (e.g. gender and age) and geographic (e.g. cities) variables, in combination with personal interests (e.g. Finance, Sports, Health).

The visualization, developed by Periscopic, allows to explore the relevant content of their homepage according to a set of user-selected parameters, so that one can solve questions like: “What is the most popular story for females between 18 and ....]]> Our latest data visualization is featured on Infosthetics.com.  Here’s an excerpt:

Yahoo! recently released a dedicated data visualization website [yahoo.com] to highlight their Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.), a service that aims to personalize the Yahoo! experience depending on a collection of demographic (e.g. gender and age) and geographic (e.g. cities) variables, in combination with personal interests (e.g. Finance, Sports, Health).

The visualization, developed by Periscopic, allows to explore the relevant content of their homepage according to a set of user-selected parameters, so that one can solve questions like: “What is the most popular story for females between 18 and 24?”. The shown content reaches back up to 24 hours ago. Each separate story can be further analyzed in terms of popularity over time, plus its demographic reach of the audience that actually clicked on it. Notably, the floating 3D globe of particles consists of news stories.

You can see the whole post on infosthetic.com

Yahoo has launched a new webpage that visualizes what’s happening on the web in near real time — and it’s totally beautiful.

The Content Optimization Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.) HTML5 site hopes to show users the “behind the scenes” process Yahoo uses to match readers with content on their personalized homepage, using technology developed in a Yahoo research lab a few years ago. While Yahoo’s homepage used to be arranged by editors, it now uses an algorithm to match individual user preferences.

“We can provide users with insights through the ....]]> Our latest data visualization is featured on Mashable.com. Here’s an excerpt:

Yahoo has launched a new webpage that visualizes what’s happening on the web in near real time — and it’s totally beautiful.

The Content Optimization Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.) HTML5 site hopes to show users the “behind the scenes” process Yahoo uses to match readers with content on their personalized homepage, using technology developed in a Yahoo research lab a few years ago. While Yahoo’s homepage used to be arranged by editors, it now uses an algorithm to match individual user preferences.

“We can provide users with insights through the lens of the 700 million users that come to our site each month,” Todd Beaupre, Yahoo’s senior director of product management, personalization and social platforms, told Mashable.

The interactive site optimizes content discovery, showing you what’s popular for a variety of user demographics, such as U.S. city, gender, age and interest (news, finance, lifestyle, Yahoo’s entertainment, sports and health). You can also chose a number of these characteristics at once, such as female sports fans in Cleveland or 35- to 44-year-olds in Atlanta.

As far as utility goes, you can think of the site as a tool to provide similar insight to Twitter trending topics or Google trends.

You can check out the whole article on their site.