Data Vis Talks – FH Potsdam: Profs, Alumni, Students

Aaand we're back – after our summer break, let's gather at Betahaus again to listen to a new set of lightning talks! This time, we will focus on the University of Applied Science in Postdam and its "Interface Design" programme. Their great profs, students and alumni advance the field of data vis through their courses, research, a public talk series (http://infovis.fh-potsdam.de/) and the new Urban Complexity Lab (http://uclab.fh-potsdam.de/). We're super happy about this great list of speakers:

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Marian Dörk (Prof)

Marian Dörk (http://mariandoerk.de/) (@nrchtct (https://twitter.com/nrchtct)) is a 'research professor' for information visualization at the Institute for Urban Futures (http://www.fh-potsdam.de/forschen/urbane-zukunft/) of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. In his courses, students of interface design and information science learn about basic principles of information visualization and engage with current research questions. Since Fall 2014 he leads a 3-year research project on visualizing cultural collections and since early 2015 he co-directs the Urban Complexity Lab (http://uclab.fh-potsdam.de/), a newly founded research space at the intersection between information visualization and urban transformation. Started through a cooperation between map-maker HERE (http://360.here.com/) and FH Potsdam, the lab is a unique place where both researchers and keen students work on visualization-related research projects. In his talk Marian will show a few ongoing projects from the lab and focus on open questions and challenges related to the interpretative and transformative aspects of data visualization.

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Till Nagel (Prof)

Till Nagel (http://tillnagel.com/) (@tillnm (https://twitter.com/tillnm)) is a visualization researcher and designer, currently working as a postdoc at the FHP Urban Complexity Lab. His research interest are in geovisualization, urban data, and interaction design, with a focus on how to engage broader audiences with interactive displays of spatiotemporal data. After visiting the MIT Senseable City Lab in Boston and Singapore, he finished his PhD at the Human Computer Interaction Group at KU Leuven, Belgium. He is the project lead of Unfolding Maps (http://unfoldingmaps.org/), a software library for geovisualizations and maps for Processing. His design work has been exhibited at Venice Biennale of Architecture, Shanghai Design Exhibition, DMY Berlin, and featured in Esquire, The Atlantic Cities, and Page, among others. In his talk he will show some of his works, and selected projects from his courses.

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Kim Albrecht (Alumnus)

Kim Albrecht (http://www.kimalbrecht.com/) (@kimay (https://twitter.com/kimay)) is a visual researcher & information designer. Among others, he is interested in networks (his most famous project being Culturegraphy (http://kimalbrecht.com/project/culturegraphy/)), time, power, processes and how we can find visual representations for these topics to produce and represent knowledge. Currently he is based in Boston, working at the Center for Complex Network Research (http://www.barabasilab.com/) as a visualization researcher. In his talk he will present recent visualization projects which are still in progress. A sneak peak into visual negotiations of scientific graphics.

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Christian Gross (Alumnus)

Christian Gross (http://www.christiangross.info) (@christiangross (https://twitter.com/christiangross)) is an interaction designer focusing on user experience design and data visualization. He is interested in gaining knowledge about complex processes and visualizing them. He works at MING Labs as an interaction designer and helps his colleagues to build up applications with data visualization components. In his talk he will present his bachelor thesis, they-know.org (http://they-know.org/), which is about interface design in government surveillance between fiction and reality. His hypothesis was: “We are not able to understand the full impact of mass surveillance, because we don’t have images of how mass surveillance could look like“. The project intends to raise awareness by designing those images of a fictional monitoring software and its possible consequences.

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Jonas Parnow (Student)

Jonas Parnow (http://jonasparnow.de/) (@zeto (https://twitter.com/zeto)) is working at Golden Section Graphics (http://golden-section-graphics.com/) as an Infor­mation designer and data visualist. Before that, he attended the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (http://www.fh-potsdam.de/studieren/design/) for his Master Degree in Inter­face Design (http://www.fh-potsdam.de/studieren/design/studiengaenge/interfacedesign/). In his talk he is presenting his Master Thesis (http://microvis.info/MicroVisualization.pdf), which is about Micro Visualizations (http://microvis.info/). The design space of micro visualization lies at the intersection of information visualization and typography and describes a family of basic techniques for enriching text in regard of its accessibility, comprehensibility, and memorability. Famous examples are Tufte’s Sparklines (http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001OR) and New York Times’ The Russia Left Behind (http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/13/russia/).

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Flavio Gortana (Student)

Flavio Gortana (http://flavio.is/) (@flaviogortana (https://twitter.com/flaviogortana)) is an Interface Design student at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. In his talk he is going to present his soon to be finished project with the (working) title Isoscope 2.0. It is a continuation of an earlier Project (Isoscope) he worked on with two colleagues in Potsdam. The main interest of the original project was to unveil patterns in traffic as well as the underlying infrastructure in a city. It was focused on the fluctuations of car traffic that emerge over the course of a day. While using similar visualization techniques, Isoscope 2.0 on the other hand will focus on the comparison of the traffic patterns of different transport modalities. While still being work in progress, Flavio will talk about his process, idea finding, experiments and development of the status quo (which is not really defined at the time of writing).

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We really hope you can make it. Don't miss it!