Calendar Visualization of Fatal Car Crashes

I really like this data visualization from Nathan Yau at FlowingData.com.  Vehicles Involved in Fatal Crashes 2010 takes a new look at the statistics released by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  Instead of plotting them on a traditional map, Nathan looked at the time data.

After seeing this map on The Guardian, I was curious about what other data was available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association. It turns out there’s a lot and it’s relatively easy to access via FTP. What’s most surprising is that it’s detailed and fairly complete, with columns for weather, number of people involved, date and time of accidents, and a lot more.

The above shows vehicles involved in fatal crashes in 2010 (which is different from number of crashes or number of fatalities). This data was just released last month, at the end of 2011 oddly enough. It’s a calendar view with months stacked on top of one another and darker days indicate more vehicles involved.

- Nathan Yau

As was suggested by others in the comments on FlowingData, I agree that since the weekends have the higher incidence rate, starting the week with Monday and moving Sunday to the last column may show that a little bit clearer.

Nathan has made all of the data avaialble for anyone that would like to try a visualization themselves.  Student project?

Turks & Caicos: Your Personal Tropical Escape Awaits

A beautiful design, Turks & Caicos: Your Personal Tropical Escape Awaits shares information for potential tourists.  Designed by Digital Surgeons for Tranquility Vacations.

The “Your Turks and Caicos Escape” pulls together top attractions and things to do in the Turks and Caicos from our client Tranquility Vacations. The Providenciales based business manages private Turks and Caicos villas and sets guests up with perks like vacation concierge services and the good advice that comes from being longtime island locals. The infographic conveys a calm, sultry feel designed to entice, combined with facts and cool tips for fun in Turks and Caicos.

The colors and images convey a great sense of calm beaches and a carefree vacation experience.  I am left wondering where these islands are, and a globe showing the islands would have been helpful. 

Thanks to Peter for sending in the link!

Infographic Christmas Card from Australia

Lee Jackson is a freelance designer in Sydney, Australia, and sent out this infographic Christmas Card looking at the unique Christmas experience in Australia.

A shameless piece of self promotion for Christmas is always good. We call it a Christmas card. This year, I wanted to create something that would engage the reader in a in old fashioned way – reading! No bells, no whistles just a simple Infographic to display just how great it is being in Oz for Christmas…

- Lee Jackson

I love this idea for a Christmas card!  Shrimp on the barby sounds like a good Christmas meal to me too!

The sizes of the wildlife silhouettes aren’t accurate to the numbers, but the comaprison from 27 million to 138 wouldn’t actually be visible and the message would be lost.  I love the old-style airport/train station arrivals and departures board to show the top 5 countries travelling in each direction.

Based on Lee’s “My Day in Beverages”, I’m guessing Christmas will be a good day for him.  Cheers!

Unlocking the Mystery of Humpback Whales

Unlocking the Mystery of Humpback Whales is a cool new infographic from MauiWhaleWatchTours.com that shows the reader a handful of easy-to-understand facts about the humpback whales.  The design is clear and stays focused on a narrow topic.  Very informative design.

The Humpback Whale infographic above was built to show some of the annual migration routes across the globe, the most common surface behaviors and the least common (in our experience), names of anatomical parts of a humpback whale, length and weight of a typical humpback whale, tips on whale watching, and some mysteries that have yet to be solved. We hope you like it! ALOHA!

Thanks to Chris for sending in the link!

Global Hotel Price Changes

A new infographic from Hotels.com showing some of the Global Hotel Price Changes from 2010 to 2011.

The research revealed that:

• New York was the favourite travel destination for UK travellers in the first six months of the year despite the average hotel price in the city hitting £160, according to the latest Hotels.com Hotel Price Index™ (HPI®).
• The 6% rise followed strong demand from domestic travellers and a surge of overseas visitors cashing in on the appreciation of their currencies against the US Dollar.
• The Big Apple was one of six US cities in the top 20 list with Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orlando and Miami also featuring as the Pound held its own.

I like the design experiment with the Polar Area Diagram (Nightingale Rose Diagram), but the colored sections relating to two different axis are a little hard to understand.  I really like the monument silouettes for each destination.  Very similar to an earlier design InfoNewt did for them about the Hotel Price Index.

The infographic is missing some form of copyright license and the URL to make it easier to find the original infographic.

Thanks to Sarah for sending in the link!

Airlines: The Future of Loyalty is Social

SimpliFlying has done some great research on how frequent travelers use social media.  The Future of Loyalty is Social infographic summarizes some of the key findings from the research.

To dig deeper, we partnered with Cranfield University in the UK to conduct a study on how frequent travelers (who travel at least five times a year) use social media. And here are some highlights of what we found:

1. There are more airlines on Twitter than there are airlines with frequent flyer programs (191 vs 179)
2. Almost 90% of frequent flyers use Facebook regularly, and over 65% “Like” at least one airline on Facebook
3. To frequent fliers cheapest fare is the least significant loyalty factor among customer service, earning loyalty points and onboard experience
4. 72% of frequent fliers would join a social loyalty program
5. Over 65% of frequent fliers would like to earn social loyalty points via check-ins or by contributing ideas to an airline’s Facebook page.
6. Over 80% of frequent fliers would like to earn social loyalty points by recommending the airline to a friend or providing positive feedback.

In the infographic below, we have summarized the findings of the study, and will soon release a detailed presentation of these findings too. Special thanks to Gavin Tan and Prof. Keith Mason from Cranfield University for their tremendous help with this study.

The simple, isotype-style illustrations are immediately recognizable since they are so similar to the figures used in airports and airline signage.  I think the Frequent Flier Participation Ladder is some fantastic data, and should have been more prominent in the design.

A handful of things I would have changed about the design:

• The initial visualization of social sites should have been in descending order.  It’s almost there except for Twitter listed first.
• The Twitter factoid ‘Frequent fliers “following” their favorite airlines on Twitter are steadily increasing’ is not supported by the visual showing how many airlines are followed by frequent fliers.  The statement claims a change over time.
• The benefit percentages are shown on an odd shape of 10 squares.  Is that supposed to be an airline seat?  Hard for the reader to visually grasp the percentage since it isn’t a simple square shape.  A grid of 100 squares would have worked better.
• The doughnut percentages are sorted in descending order, so the colors are in a different order in each doughnut.  Very hard to interpret.  The orders should have stayed consistent from Very Strong to Not at all in each doughnut.  Doughnuts are also hard to compare with each other visually.

Some great research data, and an infographic was a great way to publicize it.  They were very thankful to the professors at Cranfield University for their help with the research, but I wish they had credited a designer.  Was this done by someone inside SimpliFlying?

Found on MediaBistro

Client Infographic: The Hotel Price Index

Twice-a-year, Hotels.com updates their Hotel Price Index, and this year I was contacted to design some new infographics to go along with the report.  InfoNewt worked with designer Jeremy Yingling to create two infographics for the current set of data from the first half of 2011.  Since the research is global, we created one infographic based on American travelers and one based on Canadian travellers.

The hotels.com® Hotel Price Index™ (HPI™) is a regular survey of hotel prices in major city destinations across the world. The HPI is based on bookings made on hotels.com and prices shown are those actually paid by customers (rather than advertised rates) for the first half of 2011. The report largely compares prices paid in 2010 with prices paid in 2011.

The research is extensive, so we had to keep the information shared in the infographics fairly focused on only a few categories.  This keeps the design clean and easy to read, but also whets the reader’s appetite for more.

We varied the visual designs for each category.  The monument silhouettes attached to locations on the globe was a unique way to show map data and not look like a standard map.  The silhouettes also help the reader recognize the cities faster than reading the text.  It’s subtle, but the lines are color-coded by continent as well.

The Canadian data was a little bit different, so the design had to adapt:

You can see the complete report data on The Hotels.com Hotel Price Index page.

Time Travel in Popular Movies and TV infographic

I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t posted this one by David McCandless from InformationIsBeautiful.net.  Timelines: Time Travel in Popular Film and TV is one of my favorites, and you can tell how much effort went into the design and getting the details right.

Here’s a visualisation of time travel plots in various films and TV programs. I had a lot of fun doing this!

This is a straight data visualisation, rather than information design. That is, it’s not particularly useful, nor useable, nor meaningful. The inspiration was the coolness of the idea, really. I was excited to see what shape all the plots would make, and whether it could be shaped into something beautiful.

What I really love about this image, though, is the idea that this information has never been seen before. Despite the fact that it exists, in some way,somewhere, wrapped in various plots, it’s never been given form. I have to say, it was a joy to untangle it all :)

David, I would love to help design one for Dr. Who!

Follow the Money - infographic video

“Follow the Money” is a video summarizing the results from the project by Northwestern University grad students Daniel Grady and Christian Thiemann.  Using data from the website Where’s George?, they have been able to track the movement of U.S. paper currency.  What can you learn from this?  That there are natural borders within the U.S. that don’t necessarily follow state borders, and it can also be used to predict the spread of disease because it maps movement of people within the U.S.

From Maria Popova on BrainPickings.org: This may sound like dry statistical uninterestingness, but the video visualization of the results is rather eye-opening, revealing how money — not state borders, not political maps, not ethnic clusters — is the real cartographer drawing our cultural geography.  The project was a winner at the 2009 Visualization Challenge sponsored by the National Science Foundation and AAA.

 

From Manuel Lima on VisualComplexity.com: Some places, such as Los Angeles, California, have many bills passing through it from across the nation, while others, such as Anderson County in Tennessee - Grady’s home - have bills circulating mainly within a more local neighborhood. Shown here are images from the video.  The data from the Where’s George? project is in fact so pertinent that is also being used by researchers to predict the spread of flu across the United States.

You can see the Northwest project site, which has a much more adademic title “Community Structure in Multi-Scale Transportation Networks”.

Rendered using Processing 1.0.6.  Found on VisualizingEconomics.com, VisualComplexity.com and Maria Popova has a good article on BrainPickings.org.

City Population Shift Maps

These Day-Night maps are from a Time Magazine November 2007 interactive map feature called One Day in America.  Other cities highlighted are Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Chicago and more.  The feature also included histogram map of traffic delays.  

The maps were created by Joe Lertola, who has some other great stuff posted on his website.

Thanks to justinpobrien for sending me the link in the comments.