So graphs (and its companion graph theory) are apparently the talk of the town. Cool. Graph based databases (neo4j) and other related graph based things are popping up in places where complexity is high and low.

I found graph theory mindtickling a couple of months ago when I read an extremely basic introduction to it while tinkering with AI. The first time I met it was when I started out with Processing. But the AI book was the first time I read that graphs can be anything and everything. As a graphic designer I interpreted that as a solid foundation for creating things while keeping structure intact. A math book I borrowed from a colleague (the book is way over my head) said that “apart from drawing funny pictures it can be used to calculate things in the graph” i.e. the traveling salesman problem etc. I stopped at the funny pictures-part and decided that it was something to look into a bit more. Way too heavy on the math side, but I found via Processing that algorithms are best in practice. Good if they are understood but not a necessity as long as they work (in code) as expected, and if you don’t want them to do something slightly different which I often do. The Anar library for Processing looks good for trying things out even if it focuses a little hard on parametric modeling. I intend to show information, not the architectural structure. So, the struggling to understand continues. I look forward to get it visually controlled as soon as my mind allows me to. But hey, I can always sketch in the meantime.

Graphs and graph theory has been around a long time. So nothing new really. But for a non-math designer, using the graph and its structure gives birth to lot of rules (restrictions) and thus the mind makes new paths and new stuff pops up. I will not be surprised to see a cool information graphic that looks like a flower but is really a graph underneath.

Great fun discussing and debating visualisations in general and some ongoing projects in particular at MEDEA at Malmö Högskola today. Thanks Jonas for having us at MEDEA. We hoped to see some more people from Tibco and Google but it came out as a great day anyway. Read more about it here.

Some words about this project since it is about to come to public attention anyway through a European Union connected exhibition (For the Moment) that is going from Stockholm, Sweden, Malmö, Sweden (for the closing of the swedish chairmanship of EU) and to Mirano, Brussels (swedish embassy). Visual Enterprise is shown in the company of 45 other swedish companies with mainly “designed” products (SonyEricsson, Axis, Källemo, Jonas Lindvall, TRETORN etc) promoting swedish innovation and creativity. Yay!

Project Visual Enterprise purpose

The purpose of the project is to create a visual, interactive visualisation of the complete Enterprise and its business logic. This means to show everything an enterprise consists of, from products, people, organisations to relations and processes and more. We use several different visualisation techniques, some traditional and some more innovative. We aim to show the complete Enterprise to different kinds of users. The user can reside in different organisational levels within the organisation and thus have different needs for information. We are sketching CEO Dashboards as well as views intended for information details for the individual from several perspectives. The Visual Enterprise is detached from the even bigger visualisation concept – the Corporate Command Central which includes hardware and innovative user interfaces.

The Visual Enterprise Project is limited to the visualisation of the Enterprise and its business logic.
The focus is the ability to derive knowledge and comprehension from the visualisation. We want to understand the nature of the complete enterprise and thus allow for decisions to be made based on facts rather than instinct or complacency.

Filling the demand

Demands from the market
The overview of the complete enterprise is missing. There are methods, like a Balanced Scorecard, of controlling an enterprise from  top management in an overview manner, but no means of following the development in the enterprise that reflects the events in reality for the enterprise. The present available informationssystems (Qliktech, SAP, Hyperion etc) and techniques focuses mainly on one kind of information, whether it would be categorised as transaction data, subarea data (GIS, Product portfolio management, performance information etc) for the enterprise. These systems tends to increase the fragmented image of the enterprise, increase complexity in information retrieval and increase the dificulty of comparison of information coming from different systems rather than simplify the intended situation. Our focus would be on the complete picture – in historic, present and future contexts. This in combination with overflow of unstructured information makes swedish industry and corporations vulnarable and limiting the competitive advantages the enterprise possess.

Three main demands:
• Complete picture: multidimensional information, informationstructure, historic data, all information areas – overview and details in conjunction.
• Time: covering past, present and simulating future
• Managing the evolution of the enterprise in realtime

Summary

The long term competitiveness of the swedish (and international) businesses is affected by the capabilitiy of running, maintaining and surveilling todays informationsystems. And in its extension follows the capacity for decisionmaking supplied by the informationsystems.

Visualising the complete enterprise is the only possible way to perceive and digest the enormous amount of critical information, derived from the complete enterprise, needed on a daily basis. The visualisation is aimed for multiple roles in an enterprise. Individual needs for perceiving information is vital and implies multiple visualising techniques of the enterprise’s information.

Download pdf with more images and some details here.

Design is choice.

”What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult–that is, the revelation of complexity.”
Edward R. Tufte

Yes, Flash on the Beach 2009, and no its not just Flash developers. It was problably awesome. Sheesh, why can’t people tell me about these kinds of events a little bit sooner

Read a board post at Core77 about design language. Always nice to get more input here. I am quite fascinated by this. And found this link to Mazdas Batmanesque design language on a concept car.

I’m just thinking when do we get this clear design language in visualisations on a broader base. I see alot of charactersitic things from some of the greatest companies, but there is still alot of generic stuff out there.

I have been using Adobes products for more than 12 years. But recently, probably the last two years or something, their products just looks great. This is a simple splash-screen. Just perfectly laidout. Really impressive how their corporate or rather product design makes an impact in all their products, sites etc. I’ve just seen one really awful example, in their downloadmanager, that makes it a small step from perfect.

The total productdesign pushed through every aspect that I as a consumer have contact with is impressive. I have actually never considered all the places you can make a mark with your productdesign in software. Apple is just a whole experience and I just assume that it should look great. But it just strikes me sometimes, like when installing a demo from Adobe, how subtle and just very nicely laid out it all is. Impressive and it seems like the management realises the power of the graphic design in their case.