Comparison Swivel and Many Eyes Task Force Visualisation Eurostat 19/11/2008 Gunter Schäfer 19-November-2009

What are Swivel and Many Eyes? They follow the principle of Internet 2.0 Sharing of information (data, graphs and other visualisations) Users are invited to contribute new data and modify the presentation Invitation to comment, to rate and to re-interpret the data Discussion groups on meaning of data, learning from others No natural authority to determine content

Origin of the systems Swivel Many Eyes Commercial initiative (from California)‏ Main ‘public body’ with additional separate payable option of ‘professional edition’ Public part has function of attracting attention Commercial data access is restricted by comparisons with public data possible Many Eyes Research initiative (IBM Visual Communication Lab)‏ Long-term objectives not clear No ‚business plan‘ Research on communication on data

Technology Swivel Many Eyes Ajax and Java script ‚Browser friendly‘ but limited functionality and interaction Open source graphics library called ‚Ploticus‘ Limited range of visualisations (4 major ones)‏ Many Eyes Java run time environment Add-on required for most browsers Potential compatibility issues. Larger variety of graphical visualisation techniques (about 10-15 major ones)‏

Visualisation techniques Swivel Limited range of visualisations Vertical and horizontal bar charts Line charts Scatter plots Many Eyes Larger variety of graphical visualisation techniques (about 10-15 major ones), e.g. Zoomable maps Stacked line graphs, Block histograms Bubble charts Pie charts Visualisations are more interactive

Approaches to content Swivel Large numbers of datasets Automated generation of visualisations (hundreds of graphs per dataset)‏ Automated correlations Many Eyes Aim for many datasets Visualisation only by users More verity in types of visualisations

Critical issues Metadata is strongly neglected Are single-type visualisations sufficient to show complex situations? No concept of quality of available data: high quality beside low quality Structuring, navigation and finding of relevant information No updating of information, no information on validity of data No filtering of input (governance) Selection and deletion?

Questions to be posed Early pilots or serious applications? Will Swivel and Many Eyes survive and find a larger user community? Who are users and what do they intend with the applications? Should the ESS institutions get involved at all? What type of involvement of ESS could be imagined? What could be benefits for the ESS?

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