Data In Sight SF

I attended a weekend event that was held here in San Francisco this June. It was a data visualization challenge that had attendees form teams and compete to build something visual using data sets. They had great prizes and food.

http://datainsightsf.com/

I attended just to get an idea about what data visualization is about. I joined a team that made a prototype iPhone app for bicycle route planning. We used elevation and map data of SF give a visual representation for biking across the city. The elevation data would be calculated based on the direction of travel, so going uphill was shown in a color but downhill was neutral.  The idea was to show multiple routes at the same time. That way you could see the where the hills are and plan to ride up them or around them. My role was “designer” and I created a icon and opening screen for the prototype app. Here’s the page for the project we made

It was fun and I would do something like that again. Some of the winners of the competition did really neat things. Check out this Marvel Universe Social Graph