Visual.ly – How does it work?

On 12 March 2012 infographics startup Visual.ly launched (with some fanfare in the visualisation community) a new suite of infographic visualisation tools. Visual.ly have had some large investment rounds, with over $2m invested so far, based on their plans to democratise visualisation. I took a look around to see what is on offer.

Visual.ly are creating a community that submits, reviews and rates data visualisations and infographics, provides learning materials and articles for content creators and links up data visualisation experts with businesses and advertisers.

The new visualisation tools allow users to use pre-packaged visualisations to present their data. Currently the examples available are statistically very simple with some interesting styling. They allow basic analysis of Twitter and Facebook statistics.

Here is a promotional video that explains the concept.

The Visual.ly website describes the new tools:

BIG NEWS. THE WAIT IS OVER. INFOGRAPHIC CREATION TOOLS ARE HERE

Visualizations are powerful, but they’ve required time and hard work to create -- until now. You no longer need expensive software, extensive design skills, or number crunching ability. We’re building a tool that will allow everyone to quickly and easily create professional quality designs with their own data. And when you’re ready to show your work to the world, publish it on your Visual.ly profile, your own personal showcase.

Lee Sherman (Chief content officer at Visual.ly) said they’re trying to marry the ease of use that exemplifies Mint with the greater world of data out there. And while right now that means just making some instant graphics using Twitter and Facebook data, that will soon mean access to various APIs and publicly available data sets, as well as letting users upload their own data and even mash up data sources. Ultimately, Sherman said, users will be able to move away from pre-packaged infographics and actually edit the fields themselves. (gigaom.com)

Where are they headed?

This all sounds mighty exciting! After hunting for information I am left to conclude that there is not enough out there at the moment to see where Visual.ly is headed. This has left me to ponder….

It sounds like the big idea is to pre-package visualisations and get people to plug their data into them. This would do for infographics what a calculator did for simple maths. Instead of working it out yourself, you can type in some numbers and the answer is created.

To create more complex statistical models for visualisations that allow users to plug in their own data would produce some interesting and complicated programming challenges. If visual.ly head down the route of making complex charts, images and graphics that can be used to produce enlightening views of data, this would be a commendable endeavour with great utility. I also love the idea of datasets being made available on their website for people to interrogate and produce graphics with. That sounds like fun as well as potentially opening up huge datasets for the populous to dissect and analyse.

I will be interested to see if the site is filled with visually interesting but statistically childish charts. Content of low statistical quality will be much easier to create. It will also be much easier for users to apply to simple datasets as not much numerical understanding is required. Instant access to high impact charts with a low statistical utility could be used in many a presentation to liven things up, but may not be much use in providing new perspectives using data. Fancy graphics lacking in substance could even obscure interesting analysis if emphasis shifts from statistical rigour to pretty presentation.

The big question for me is this: 

Will the site improve the use of data in infographics and visualisation? Or will the site shift the emphasis of infographics towards design rather than statistical content? 

One thing is for sure, it will be interesting to see how it develops.




Simon Conway is a co-founder of Condaal and an evangelist for Lean Information. He can be reached on simon.conway@condaal.com