Asian Carp Project – Infographics & Megamap©

Resilience Design Lab used the Megamap© process in order to support the Asian Carp Project’s efforts to raise awareness and enlist broad participation in preventing Grass Carp from entering Canadian Great Lakes. The Asian Carp Project is led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Please see below to view PDFs of the Megamap© and associated infographics.

 

 

Creator: 
MegaMap generated by Resilience Design lab for the Asian Carp Project
graphic of ecosystems degradation due to Asian Grass Carp
Graphic depicting costs associated with invasive species
Monday, May 6, 2019 - 10:30am
http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/2661/

OCAD Faculty conduct King Street Pilot Survey

A photograph of the OCAD University survey booth on King Street
Monday, October 15, 2018 - 9:45am

As part of Visual Analytics Lab's large urban design research project, iCITY, researchers have been conducting a survey (the "Walkable Street Survey") for the King Street Pilot. 

iCITY project member Jeremy Bowes, MARCH, AOCA and Professor in the Faculty of Design, states, "It would be great if any of you who visit the art and King street experience, especially now with the 'unzipped pavilion' by BIG architects, could comment. The survey takes about 12 to 14 minutes, so it has a lot of detailed design related questions, and the usual demographic questions from the city at the end."

The survey, which is still open to anyone interested in providing their pedestrian experience of streetscapes in urban Toronto, can be found here: https://bit.ly/2ycrbil

Learn more about the iCITY research project

Isabel Meirelles Co-Organizes Second Annual Information+ Conference

Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - 11:30am

Professor Isabel Meirelles is responsible for co-organizing the second anual Information+ Conference, held in Potsdam, Germany, from October 19th-22nd. The biennial conference brings together researchers and practitioners in information design and visualization to discuss common questions and challenges in these rapidly changing fields. Information+ includes a variety of workshops, four keynotes, a two-day conference and an exhibition of historic information design, organized by the German Museum of Books and Writing. The event is hosted by the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. 

Learn more at http://informationplusconference.com/

The Communicative Value of Data Visualizations

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 - 11:45am

Professor Isabel Meireilles has been invited to speak at the Fields Institute workshop "Statistical Inference, Learning and Models in Data Science", held from September 24-27, 2018 at The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.

Data visualizations are ubiquitous and critically important to generating new knowledge in several fields today. They often play a central role in different stages of the research process, from exploring data with visual analytical methods to communicating findings with visual displays aimed at both experts and general audiences. In this talk Meirelles will focus on the latter, visualizations used to communicate complex information. In this communicative role, visualizations are visual (re)presentations of results, requiring presentation skills originated in well-established practices, such as graphic design and journalism. Through case studies, Meirelles will examine cognitive and perceptual constraints, visual strategies and tradeoffs, and critically reflect on common challenges of the medium.

Interested participants may watch this event through the Fields Institute Video Streaming service, FieldsLive, found here: https://www.fields.utoronto.ca/live

 

Venue & Address: 
Rm. 230, The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. 222 College Street, Second Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 3J1.
Website: 
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/activities/18-19/statistical_inference
Cost: 
No cost

Creating a visual language of marks

Above image: a page from the Register of Liberated Africans, c. 1837

Creating a visual language of marks: approaching African identities through data visualization

Co-investigators: Martha Ladly, Ph.D. (OCAD University) and Katrina Keefer, Ph.D. (Adjunct Professor of History, Trent University, Katrinakeefer@trentu.ca

Project Manager and Research Assistant: Kartikay Chadha (kchadha@faculty.ocadu.ca)

Collaborators: Paul Lovejoy (York University), Dean Rehberger (Michigan State University), Mohammed Salau (University of Mississippi), and Abubakar Babajo Sani (Umaru Musa Yar'adua University, Katsina).
Research Assistants: Eric Lehman, Michael McGill, Maria Yala, Georgina Yeboah
Past Research Assistants: Ma Qianyi

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a centuries-long trauma that saw approximately 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homes and transported to work in the emerging plantation societies of the Americas. The trauma of enslavement and sustained repression of language, culture and beliefs blurred memories of origins and birthplaces. Previous attempts at analyzing large datasets of names recorded in manumission records to unearth individuals and personal histories have been challenged by practices of slave renaming. Drs. Ladly and Keefer will work with their collaborators to develop a searchable visual database using the entries from the 19th century Registers of Liberated Africans to reveal individual identities and origins. Their research includes appropriate methods for collection, analysis and presentation of the sensitive personal information within these datasets. They will design and train an AI model to work in conjunction with ethno-linguistic and visual models, so that researchers and members of the public may extract meaningful information from the data. Working in the Visual Analytics Lab, the OCAD U design team will construct computational architectures for the visual/linguistic database, develop a mathematical model for data analysis, and design dynamic 2D and 3D visual models and user interfaces.

For more information, please visit  http://decodingorigins.org 

 

 

This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

SSHRC Logo

Photograph of a page from the Register of Liberated Africans, circa 1837
Monday, July 9, 2018 - 9:30am

Walk the Mikinaak: Honouring work by the Ogimaa Mikana Project

Thursday, July 12, 2018 - 10:00am to 12:00pm

Walk the Mikinaak: Honouring work by the Ogimaa Mikana Project
In conjunction with Onsite Gallery's exhibition, Diagrams of Power

 

Thursday, July 12, 2018
10 a.m. to noon

High Park
Free and open to all

Hosted by:
Eliana Macdonald and Margaret Pearce

 

We will gather at High Park  to honour and activate a walk created by the Ogimaa Mikana Project, by re-walking and re-mapping their work with our bodies. The walk will take us to a sequence of places around the park where we will pause for teachings and actions. The route we take reveals a map of a turtle. By renewing and remaking this walk by the Ogimaa Mikana Project, we take up the responsibility they have set before us, to make Anishinaabeg legible to the great turtle by walking and honouring the land and all Anishinaabeg. Bring: walking shoes, water, snacks, sun protection, raingear if needed. If you'd like to see the map we make as we walk, bring your favorite GPS tracking app on your phone.

 

Meet at: High Park main entrance on Bloor Street West, at the "High Park" sign

 

Directions to High Park

  • Subway: Bloor-Danforth subway line to High Park station, between Keele and Runnymede stations. Main entrance to park is a two minute walk from the station.
  • Streetcar: 508 Lakeshore streetcar to the Parkside or Colborne Lodge stops. Or take the 506 Carlton streetcar to the High Park loop by Parkside Drive.
  • Bus: 80 Queensway bus route (between Keele subway station and Sherway Gardens) to Howard Park Avenue stop on Parkside Road.
  • Car: Drive in at the main entrance on Bloor Street West. Turn south at High Park Avenue, and follow West Road south. You can park in one of the available spaces along West Road, or drive down to the lots at the restaurant or the zoo, then walk back to meet us at the entrance. Alternatively, you can use the entrance from Parkside Drive, then follow High Park Blvd.

For more info contact elianam@ecotrust.ca.

Venue & Address: 
High Park main entrance on Bloor Street West, at the "High Park" sign
Website: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/625223091188970/
Email: 
onsite@ocadu.ca
Phone: 
416-977-6000 x456
Cost: 
Free
Walk the Mikinaak
Walk the Mikinaak flyer

Diagrams of Power showcases the politics of data visualization

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Opening July 11, Onsite Gallery’s newest exhibition, Diagrams of Power,features art and design works that use data, diagrams, maps and visualizations to challenge dominant narratives and support the resilience of marginalized communities. 

The expansive exhibition features the work of eighteen prominent artists, designers, researchers, cartographers, activists and collectives: Joshua Akers, The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Josh Begley, Joseph Beuys, Vincent Brown, Bureau d'études, Department of Unusual Certainties, W. E. B. Du Bois, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, Forensic Architecture, Iconoclasistas, Julie Mehretu, Lize Mogel, Ogimaa Mikana, Margaret Pearce, Laura Poitras, Philippe Rekacewicz and Visualizing Impact.

Curated by Patricio Dávila, Associate Professor in OCAD University’s Faculty of Design, the exhibition makes visible both ‘what’ gets represented, and ‘who’ is doing the representing. “Maps, diagrams and visualizations are both artifacts and processes — they are tools that tell a story,” said Dávila. “They create ways to bring people and objects together in the telling of that story, with the outcomes made available to be viewed and inspected, and also performed so they can be heard and felt. Each creator uses this mode to tell inconvenient stories that upset and resist the status quo.”

Diagrams of Power opens with a free, public reception on Wednesday, July 11 from 6 to 9 p.m., and continues through to the early morning of September 30, 2018, including the evening of Nuit Blanche Toronto (Saturday, September 29, 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. on Sunday, September 30). 

A complete list of participating creator biographies is available at https://www2.ocadu.ca/event/diagrams-of-power.

About Onsite Gallery
Onsite Gallery (www.ocadu.ca/onsite) is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD University, and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays from noon to 8pm; Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 7pm; Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 pm.

Support
Diagrams of Power is produced with the support of OCAD University's Faculty of Design Office, Public Visualization Lab, Multi Touch Digital, Microsoft and Nexus Investments.

Diagram of Power's public workshops and research engagement events are supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Onsite Gallery gratefully acknowledges that the new gallery construction was funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes. Gallery furniture was supplied by Nienkämper. The Onsite Gallery logo was created by Dean Martin Design.

About OCAD University (OCAD U)
OCAD University (www.ocadu.ca) is Canada’s university of the imagination. Founded in 1876, the university is dedicated to art, design and digital media education, practice and research, and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. 

Media inquiries:

Sarah Mulholland
OCAD U Communications
416-977-6000 x1327
smulholland@ocadu.ca

ChartCheck

Supporting the creation of a community-based online resource to combat misinformation while improving data literacy.

In the winter of 2018, OCAD University's Isabel Meirelles participated in an expert panel of eight reviewers and contributors to ChartCheck, a proof-of-concept project by Periscopic, supported in part by a grant from the Knight Foundation. ChartCheck aims to serve as a trusted and impartial online resource that evaluates the validity of charts, graphs and other data representations, while encouraging data literacy. The expert panel helped with devising a comprehensive set of assessment criteria as well as evaluating a selection of data presentations based on three main categories: Data quality, data analysis, and presentation. Periscopic plans to launch ChartCheck by October 1st, 2018 so as to respond to data presentations used to influence the US midterm elections.

Click here to learn more about ChartCheck.

 

Isabel Meirelles is a designer and educator whose intellectual curiosity lies in the relationships between visual thinking and visual representation. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Design and a researcher in the Visual Analytics Lab at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. In addition to collaborating with scientists and humanists in the development of visualization systems, Isabel’s research focuses on the examination of the fundamentals underlying how information is structured, represented and communicated in different media. Current research interests include extending graphical literacy to scientific disciplines, especially in the process of externalizing knowledge and communicating findings. Meirelles is the author of “Design for Information: An introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices behind effective information visualizations” (Rockport, 2013).

Sponsor(s): 
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 11:00am

Graphical Style Guide for Scientific Communication

A style guide as a pedagogical vehicle for clarifying design decisions as well as helping scientists with instructions for generating visualizations.

During the summer and fall 2017, Isabel Meirelles collaborated with Dr. Arturas Petronis and his scientific team at the Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory, CAMH. Isabel lead a design team that included a co-PI (Angela Norwood) and two undergraduate research assistants in a two-phase project. In the first phase, the design team stylized and refined a set of charts for reproduction in an article published on Nature Communications 9: 644 (2018) - click here to read.  

The work was conducted based on data visualization best practices, general principles of graphic design and visual perception. In the second phase, the design team devised a graphical style guide specifying systems and conventions for continuous use by the scientific research team. While the main goal of the guide is to provide guidance for designing effective charts, it also works as a pedagogical vehicle for clarifying design decisions. The project was presented in October 2017 at the international peer-review conference  IDXVII VisionPlus, organized by IIID—International Institute for Information Design.

 

Isabel Meirelles is a designer and educator whose intellectual curiosity lies in the relationships between visual thinking and visual representation. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Design and a researcher in the Visual Analytics Lab at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. In addition to collaborating with scientists and humanists in the development of visualization systems, Isabel’s research focuses on the examination of the fundamentals underlying how information is structured, represented and communicated in different media. Current research interests include extending graphical literacy to scientific disciplines, especially in the process of externalizing knowledge and communicating findings. Meirelles is the author of “Design for Information: An introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices behind effective information visualizations” (Rockport, 2013).

Sponsor(s): 
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 10:45am

iCity: Urban Informatics for Sustainable Metropolitan Growth

The iCity urban transport project focuses on the development of data analytics transportation and transit planning tools that could increase individual and community participation in the development, planning, and design of transportation systems interfaces.

This ongoing project is a collaboration between multiple institutions, led by the University of Toronto, and includes OCAD University, University of Waterloo, and IBM Canada. OCAD's role is the third theme of this multi-year project and focuses on developing a visualization and visual analytics tools that can interpret the vast amount of quantitative data gathered from the socio-technical and technological systems that are embedded in urban life. 

The OCAD U iCity team employed a user-centered process for design, exploring visualization techniques based on user interaction with urban transportation applications. A taxonomy was developed that considered user tasks, level of engagement, and type of data input or output. Researchers also interviewed experts from within the urban transportation sector to identify their visualization needs and challenges. This project has delivered many open source research projects including Betaville, StoryFacets, Compara, and more. The current stage of the project for OCAD University and the visualization theme works directly with the recent development of the Toronto Waterfront in partnership with Waterfront TO, ESRI, and Sidewalk Labs.

As an interactive system resource, iCity sets out the conditions for individuals and groups to highlight their needs/wants/values and to particpate in strategic planning opportunities, facilitating a more democratic and participatory urban design process.

Additional resources:
Read "Analyzing student travel patterns with augmented data visualizations"[1], available through OCAD's Open Research Repository, here.
iCity at the University of Toronto

 

 

1. Skelton, Carl and Juneja, Manpreet Kaur and Dunne, Cody and Bowes, Jeremy and Szigeti, Steve and Zheng, Minsheng and Gordon, Marcus A. and Diamond, Sara (2017) Analyzing student travel patterns with augmented data visualizations. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 10-14 Jun 2017. Available at http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/1868/

 2D map with interactive 3D infographics representing StudentMoveTO data generated using Betaville
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 10:15am

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