Visualizing Data

In doing some work for the News Games blog I came across the GoodGuide's Vote With Your Dollars visualization. It's powered by Flare.

Like everything else that I've seen made with Flare, I really like this. Maybe I'm just pleased with the interactive eye candy, the API has lots of sexy transitions, but I could absolutely see something like this as a means for engaging data about strip malls. Any ideas? Any other means of engaging data I should be considering as well as or instead of Flare?

Time Spent in the Field...

One thing we're talking about in the Public Design Workshop is how to document the time it takes to sense spaces. I think for my project it might be interesting to account for my time spent collecting data comparatively. For instance, while I might spend a few hours picking up data, taking notes, photos, etc., it might be interesting to juxtapose that with the amount of time an individual might spend working, shopping, or eating/drinking in that space and whether there's any overlap.

The difficulty is conveying the social aspect of data collection. It's nice to have pictures and blog posts conveying process, but how can this inform the final project? How can it convey the very real prospect that this is a social activity taking place in the "real" world?

That is all for now.