New technologies have increased the possibilities of communicative expression and expanded processes and procedures of accessing, organizing and communicating information. If in the past it was possible to manually structure and visualize data, nowadays computation methods are intrinsic to how we deal with very large data sets, whether in the design of exploratory analytical tools or for communication purposes. The term Big Data well expresses the state of the field and the challenges ahead of us. A central question is how to prepare not only future generations, but ourselves included, to deal with the data proliferation: from learning how to structure and analyze data to developing skills and methods for effectively visualizing information. It is critical to foster understanding of relationships between visual thinking, visual representation, and visual communication. How can we promote informed criteria to support the design process of data visualization?

About the Speaker

Isabel Meirelles is an Associate Professor of Art & Design and the Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Media & Design at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Isabel recent interests are in data visualization and visual analytics, and she collaborates with the Center for Complex Network Research of Northeastern Univ. in Boston and with the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining laboratory (KDD LAB) in Pisa. A recent example of this line of her work is the visualization of the Human Development Index for the United Nations: http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/lets-talk-hd/.