How Draw Something Blew Up Without Blowing Up

Now here is a game for everyone! It doesn’t matter how well you can draw, you can just draw and laugh with your friends at your attempts! This app has become very popular and quite quickly, the How Draw Something Blew Up Without Blowing Up infographic from The Next Web (with help from Couchbase) charts the growing trendiness of this game.

Draw Something was downloaded 50 million times in 50 days. Users created billions of drawings, adding 3,000 new pictures every second. On March 21st, OMPOP, the company behind the game, was bought up by Zynga for more than $200 million. On the first weekend in April, I downloaded the game for my first time and was admittedly addicted for 72 hours.

Today, a company called Couchbase gave us the exclusive on an infographic that charts the app’s viral growth. In case you’ve not heard of Couchbase, it’s the platform that enabled the game to keep up with its NoSQL database technology — from 6 database servers to more than 90 — without a second of game downtime. That’s impressive.

The infographic below charts the amount of user data, drawings per second, number of servers used to keep the game up and going and the number of users over 8 weeks of the game’s mind-blowing growth. The only question now is, will the game’s addictive nature keep fans or will they get over it as quickly as I have?

Intended as a quick summary of Draw Something’s growth, and Couchbase’s success in supporting their database expansion needs, this infographic does a good job.  Simple, easy-to-understand visuals, and use of some hand-sketch illustrations to reinforce how Draw Something works.

Some visualizations in the Billions of Drawings section would have been nice to communicate the immense scale of the growth numbers.  Most readers don’t truly grasp the difference between 10 million and 2 billion by just reading the text numbers.

How Mobile Technology is Changing World Travel

Do you use your smartphone to help make traveling easier? If you do, then your part of a huge growing trend. The How Mobile Technology is Changing World Travel infographic from MyDestination.com shares some interesting statistics when it comes to traveling. 

Back in 1903 when the Wright Brothers first took flight in their first fixed winged aircraft, little could anyone have imagined what travel would become. Fast forward to 2012 and the internet has revolutionised travel – along with communication – with the birth of the smartphone. But just how much as this palm-held device influenced and changed our travelling habits? And just how far has travel–based mobile technology still got to go?

There’s a lot of information gathered from many different sources in this one, which is one reason it’s so long.  The use of mobile devices to plan your travel and the use of them during your travel are definitely growing, and this infographic does a great job of helping the readers get some basic understanding of what’s going on.

A few issues with the data visualization designs though:

• The doughnut charts at the top are hard to read because the edges are so thin.  A thicker area around the circles would have been easier to see.
• How can the UK have 129% Mobile Penetration?  By definition that number can’t be higher than 100%.
• The visualization using the airplane silhouette is challenging.  There should be 10 windows to easily visualize the 74%.  Readers think in tens, and it’s hard to understand a portion of six windows.  I’ll bet the 54% color fill is close, but I have no way to figure out if it’s accurate.
• Again, readers think in tens, so don’t show the “…traffic for 78% of travel sites” as a visualization of seven computer monitors, use ten.
• At the bottom should be a copyright, and the URL to the original infographic landing page. 

My Destination is also asking readers for suggestions for their next infographic design:

Are you an avid smartphone user abroad? Can’t imagine life without Facebook on the move? Don’t have a smartphone and not intending on caving in? We want to hear from you! Whether you are embracing the mobile travel revolution or just love travel, we want to know what is getting you talking. We’re also on the lookout for ideas for our next infographic special. Email hq.socialmedia@mydestination.com with any suggestions or tweet us @MyDestination using #TravAndTech.

Thanks to Oli for sending in the link!

Following The White Rabbit

Who is the mastermind behind your favorite android application? Do you wonder what kind of music they like? The Following the White Rabbit infographic from Startapp.com gives us the low down on what kinds of people are behind Android applications based on a survey they did in March 2012.

Have you ever wondered what kind of people make Android applications? Well wonder no more! We at StartApp decided to investigate this in depth by creating a special Android developer survey which we sent out to all of our Android developers who kindly participated in the survey! Therefore, we are now very proud to present our first infographic that explores everything from the companies Android developers work for to the music they listen to and everything in between. Let us know what you think!

This is a cool infographic that does a good job with the visualizations.  With survey data, it’s a challenge to visualize the results correctly.  Some survey answers add up to 100%, but some questions are asked where the respondent can “check all that apply” so these answers are separate.  The pie charts in the coffee cups, the doughnut charts  and the stacked bar are examples of survey questions that add up to 100% (except the stacked bar adds up to 101% due to rounding, so they should have displayed the tens decimal place).

“What App Markets do you use?” and “What OS’s Do You Develop Apps for?” are some of the multiple answer questions, so the answers are displayed as separate bars or doughnut charts with the appropriate logos.  A couple results are displayed with the wrong type of graphic.  “How Many Apps Have You Published so far?” and “What Would Be Your Preferred Pastime” should both be shown adding up to 100%.

The overall design is a bit crowded with a lot of visual noise, but the statistics are easy to understand.  The coffee-brown color and the overlapping visualizations give the visual impression of working late nights and juggling many details, just like an app coder does.

At the bottom, there should be a copyright statement and the URL to find the original infographic landing page.

Found on Infographic Journal

Client Infographic: The Mobile Advantage

Nuance Communications has released a new infographic, The Mobile Advantage, sharing the results of their own mobile consumer preference research.  Designed by InfoNewt, this infographic design tells the story of how important mobile apps are to brands.

If you’re a consumer-facing organization hoping to use mobile to build a strong, long-lasting relationship with your customers, there’s some good news!  A new survey shows that smartphone owners are increasingly downloading not just games but customer service apps - especially from their mobile carrier, bank and favorite retailers. In fact, 84% of consumers surveyed generally prefer to use a company’s mobile app for routine inquiries (checking balance, check flight status, etc.) rather than calling the company on the phone. 

As a B2B communication tool, this infographic does a great job sharing the key findings from the research statistics.  Since Nuance performed the research behind how apps form positive customer service experiences for customers, the infographic is a good tool to share that unique knowledge with their customers.

Broken into a three-part story, the design starts with some basic information about the growth of mobile devices.  The center section focuses on the huge impact on the customers’ view of a company when they have a customer service app.  And finally, the last section explores what customers would like to see in a customer service app.

Thanks to the team at Nuance for being outstanding to work with!

Tablet Adoption at Work

The State of Tablet Adoption at Work is a new infographic from VentureBeat.com.  It’s interesting that the infographic itself was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm, but included as part of a VentureBeat article.  You can find the original version here at TabletsAtWork.com

Since the debut of Apple’s iPad in Jan. 2010, the integration of tablet devices into our lives and work has progressed rapidly — so fast that it’s sometimes hard to put in perspective how quickly got here.  The exclusively obtained infographic below breaks down how far workforce adoption of tablet technology has come — and where it’s headed. (The graphic was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm.)

I love the clean, professional design look.  I really like the color scheme and the mixed bag of visualization styles; grid of icons, treemap, stacked bar, line chart, etc.

Only a couple of design issues about this one I would improve.

• I’m willing to let 16 tablet icons represent 16.1 Million tablets shipped in 2010 (rounding), but why only 144 tablets shown to represent 147.2 Million?  That was just the designer wanting a clean, square visual that breaks the actual data visualization.
• The line chart showing 134% increase in shipments powered by Android and Windows is way out of scale.  It’s visualizing something close to a 900% increase.
• At the bottom there should be a copyright statement and the URL to the original infographic landing page so people can find the full high-resolution version.

Found on the Inside Flipboard feed in Flipboard for iPad.

Distracted Driving Infographic

From the Christensen Law Firm in Utah comes the Cell Phones & Driving infographic that looks at the horrifying statisitics behind accidents and deaths caused by people using cell phones while driving in the U.S.

shocking facts about the realities of texting and driving in modern culture. It mentions, for example, that 18% of all fatal accidents are caused by cell phone use, and that 6 collisions occur every 10 minutes because of cell phones. In other words, keep the cell phone as far away from you as possible while driving, because frankly, becoming one these statistics is not an admirable achievement.

The design style is very crowded and busy, but I like the unique approach to using each number on the keypad as a statisitic.

“More than one in four Americans who download apps admit to using those apps while driving.”  On my iPhone, one of those apps is the TomTom GPS app, so of course I use it while driving!

Thanks to Jake for sending in the link!

Foursquare Reaches 10 Million Users

Foursquare yesterday announced that they have reached 10 Million members, and released this infographic for the occasion.

And, to commemorate this pretty crazy occasion, we put together a little infographic. Be sure to click through to see it bigger; if you’re anything like us, watching the full-size animated map puts butterflies in your tummy. Thank you so much for supporting us!

I love the animated portion right in the middle!

Personally, I have mostly given up on Foursquare check-ins without the points or mayorships earning anything for me.  I wonder how many of those 10 Miliion joined, but don’t use Foursquare anymore?

Microsoft: The Mobile Commerce Revolution

The Microsoft TAG team has released a new infographic focused on intelligent shoppers.  Mobile Commerce Revolution: Smartphones & Smarter Shoppers looks at the data behind how we use our smartphones to compare prices, look-up coupons, make purchases with our phones and more.

This is a very busy infographic, with some great data hidden inside.  I like the visuals and the isotype style, but there isn’t a cohesive story or clear path for your eye to follow.  The e-commerce sales growth from 2009 to 2015 is a huge data point and should be much more prominent.

Thanks to Nick for sending in the link!

Microsoft's Growth of Mobile Marketing

I love to see the big companies experimenting with new media like infographics!  The Growth of Mobile Marketing and Tagging was published by Microsoft Tag last week, and explores the data behind mobile devices.

Sure, it seems like everyone’s got a cell phone – but what are the hard numbers? How many people have smart phones, and what demographic is the most active group in mobile socialization? (Surprise — it’s actually not teenagers!) Find out the statistics on the present (and future!) of mobile marketing in our new infographic

They also broke the graphics down into individual pieces (roughly) and created a presentation version for anyone that wants to use it on SlideShare:

The growth of mobile marketing and tagging

View more presentations from Microsoft Tag

Thanks Elliott for send me a link!

Update on Friday, April 1, 2011 at 11:04AM by Randy

The designer was Andrew Martinolich from http://www.distilled.co.uk

2010 Facebook vs. Twitter Social Demographics

Facebook vs. Twitter is a good one from DigitalSurgeons.com.  They’ve done a great job of compiling the data from at least 10 different sources, to create an overall profile of the standard Facebook and Twitter users.

One has over 500 million users, the other just over 100 million. But who are they and what’s their behavior? What’s their value to a brand? How old are they? What’s their education? How much do they make? Just exactly what does the Facebook vs. Twitter landscape look like? Good questions. Here’s how we see it.

The use of the Polar Area Chart (also called a Nightingale Rose Diagram) does a good job of breaking down the demographic information into 11 different categories.  Unlike a standard pie chart, each slice is the same angle, and only the radius of each slice conveys value.

The difficulty in using this visualization style, is that it’s hard for the reader to compare between the two diagrams.  Does Twitter or Facebook have more logins by mobile device?  The reader can’t tell from the visuals, and they have to move back and forth reading the values to tell the difference.

One possible alternative would have been to put everything into one Polar Area Chart, so for every section the Facebook slice is next to the Twitter slice.  That way you could visually compare the two without reading the numbers or comparing between two charts.

Thanks Matt for sending in the link!