Real-Time Data Metaphors, understanding CHANGE without reading numbers: BASHIBA Panorama

Peripheral Information Awareness through Evolving Mood Maps
Representing multivariable changes of complex data sets with beautiful developing landscapes
The idea behind the Panorama solution is to express the overall 'mood' of evolving, complex data (such as the development of the stock market) in rendered 3D animations that can be perceived and interpreted with little cognitive effort. The software application maps variables of a data set (e.g. bonds, shares, overall trading intensity or fluctuation of the stock market) to graphic parameters in a 3D simulation, such as ocean waves, sun strength, wind speed, cloud particles etc. Developments of the stock market, for example, become perceivable by cloud transformations, wave precipitations, and changes in sunlight. The result is a beautiful, developing scene in which observers (e.g. traders) can monitor several streams of background information without effort in their peripheral vision. Whenever this background information signals particular relevance in a given context, it moves to the observer's foreground attention. In this way information can become functional art instead of just a burden.

Speaker: Roberto Vitalini

Google Tech Talks
June 26, 2008