Recently  blogs have also come to my attention that have some fascinating information visualizations and there seems to be more and more real applications for sharing information and ideas in this form. Here are a few of my recent favourites:

On “where does my money go?” you can see an interactive visualization of government spending in the UK. It’s an amazing way to actively engage tax payers and help citizens to understand government spending. Seems to me that governments could use tools like this to connect with people and develop new levels of transparency.

The classic information visualization from TED with Hans Rosling made me think that statistics might be incredibly interesting if only we could all get past the the numbers.

Over at the great blog, Information is beautiful I quickly and easily understood all I needed to about H1N1.

The internet is full of great visualizations of data and other information. Some of it is useful and some of it not but in bringing together art, design, and statistics information visualizations make difficult to understand concepts and overwhelming data sets something that one can understand at a glance. There is a huge opportunity for companies and governments to leverage these tools and ideas to communicate complex ideas to customers, employees, citizens and other stakeholders. Imagine a corporate annual report with financial information that even a layman could understand or a government budget we could review with a glance.

If you know of some interesting visualizations or where governments and/or companies are applying these concepts leave a comment and let me know.

I’ve been eating banana’s for years and taking for grated the customer research and user centered design that must have gone into this fruit.

As the video points out it’s perfectly made to fit in the hand end eat easily with no mess of fuss. The colour coded identification system easily lets you know the perfect time to eat the banana and that non-slip grip is great for busy professionals on the go.

The video does seem to focus on the human interaction with the banana but forgets that the designers of the banana pulled off a seldom seen feat of design making the banana not just human centered design but truly a cross species product as seen in the user test below. Watching the monkey enjoy his banana bridges the species gap and the designers of this product have made an amazing social statement of our common lineage and an evolutionary link by creating a product that both we and our distant cousins can enjoy equally. So next time you snap the open tab of a banana take a moment to think about the amazing product that has been created.

If you haven’t visited some of the more rural and remote parts of China you may not have noticed but the economic juggernaut is a multicultural society. While the country is 90+ % Han Chinese there are huge swaths of the country that are home to ethnic minorities like the Hmong, Uyghur, Tibetan and Mongols to name a few. China recognizes 55 ethnic groups within it’s borders.

If you didn’t know that China had so many ethnic groups living in the country you can hardly be blamed as it’s not exactly a celebrated part of the national identity. China actively promotes assimilation of ethnic minority groups and in recent years this policy has been exemplified in Tibet where the completion of the Qingzang railway to Lhasa caps off years of policies that have left the Tibetan population a minority group within what was previously their own country.

I don’t mean to sound self righteous or lecture on Tibetan self determination. I do support the cause, it’s just not the point I’m trying to get across right now. As a Canadian I’m lucky enough to see multiculturalism in another incarnation where the assimilation into Canadian culture is encourage but at the same time the cultures we come from are celebrated and shared. I’ve also read of the dangers of multicultural policies that have left groups of minorities on the fringes of society leading to alienation and social unrest in places like Denmark and France.

Maybe it’s a fear of embracing differences or losing control of natural resource rich areas that minorities in China inhabit but their policies towards minority groups and responses to demonstrations are far from measured. The crackdown on demonstrators in Urumqi yesterday showed no thought of diplomacy or tact. Much like the response to the Tibetan demonstrations last year it was knee jerk reactions to seemingly legitimate protests.  The march towards progress seems to also necessitate undermining the culture of minority groups like in Kashgar a famous stop along the Silk Road where 85% of the old city largely populated by Uyghur’s is slated to be demolished in the next few years.

I have visited Urumqi and Tibetan villages in China where there is a simmering frustration where minority groups feel squeezed out of the places and culture that they have grown up in by people viewed as foreigners. I don’t think there is an easy fix to the problem that China has been slowly creating over the years. Through sheer might of population minorities in China are likely to continue to lose their distinctiveness and be pushed further to the fringes with the veil of economic growth covering the heart of a social experiment to create a unified and uniethnic country.

This seems a sad loss in diversity and a failure to capitalize on the opportunity for tourist dollars and more importantly a chance to use their own people to build connections in the region by promoting ethnic diversity. China is home to people of decent from Korea, minority groups in Vietnam, Pakistan, Afghanistan and could build significant bridges with India and the West with adjustments to policies on Tibet. The heavy handed approach to managing minority groups within China is a failure on all fronts and even if successful in the years to come will lead to a China that is whole but less than it’s parts.

If you checkout the website you’ll learn that tweenbots are a Robot/People art project by Kacie Kinzer. The idea is to create human dependent robots and let them loose in New York with nothing but a note to tell their fellow commuters where it is that they’re trying to get to. Made out of  simple inanimate materials (cardboard with drawn on eyes and smiles) tweenbots are less like a lost ipod or virtual pet than they are a modern day courageous but helpless Wall-E. The experiment itself yielded some amazing results and over the months of testing Kacie says that no tweenbot was ever hurt or damaged on their voyages.

I love little things that show the helpfulness, caring and empathy of human beings and tweenbots exemplify an overarching good that still exists even in a giant city. If you watch the video below you can follow one tweenbot as it encounters good samaritans on its way. The interactions between the people and the little robot show how a person can almost instantly form a bond with an object and how such a simple idea can drive a meaningful interaction. I’m sure that the people who helped this little tweenbot still remember it and feel good about doing their part.

Maybe cities around the world should run pilot programs to see if tweenbots around the city can create a sense of community. Maybe if we all got used to helping out a tweenbot now and then it would make it easier to offer the same help to others. Plus they’re just so cute that seeing one on the street is bound to make anyone smile.