A Directory of Visualizing Tools

Update Feb 2007: Just came across some cool stuff from digg labs (the guys behind digg) who haev some coold stuff I've added below.

In this week’s WSJ.com column I wrote (subscription only, I’m afraid) about treemaps, tools which allow you to look at data differently:

One of the things that bugs me about our oh-so-cool information revolution is this: We show such little imagination in how we actually look at that information. Think about it. We have all this fascinating data at our fingertips and yet we have decided the most effective way of viewing it is in...a table. Or a chart. Or a list of search results ("1.7 gazillion matches -- click here for next 10 results"). There has to be a better way.

A treemap “is a bunch of squares, arranged to form a mosaic. The size and color of each block mean something”. It’s probably easier to show it than to explain it:

(from RoomforMilk, see below)

The size of blocks indicate, in this case, the popularity of each subject, shades and color indicate how recent the topic has been updated. Click on one and more information appears. Best is to check them out: they’re intuitive and fun to use. Really.

Here’s some links (yes I know this should be in the form of a treemap, but I’m not that clever) from the column and some stuff I wasn’t able to put in for reasons of space (Yes, I am aware of the irony. Yell at my editor): 

• stack a vertical bar chart of activity, with the stories themselves moving way too fast down the screen (from digg labs)
• digg's bigspy an impressive scrolling list of stories, size dictated by the number of diggs.
• swarm another digg offering. not sure what this does, actually, but it looks cute.
• Panopticon a leading supplier of professional Visual Business Intelligence to the financial services industry as well as other fields of business. Download their free Panopticon Explorer .NET Learning Edition which lets you view treemaps of files, processes, event logs and spreadsheets.
• Marcus Weskamp’s excellent newsmap
• Peet’s Coffee Selector good example of a treemap at work for consumers
• RoomforMilk lovely looking treemap of Slashdot headlines, or as the website puts it — “RoomforMilk.com is a news feed pasteurizer and homogenizer featuring Slashdot News Headlines. RoomforMilk is not even 2% affiliated with Slashdot.org.” Colors and shades indicate new/old (fresh/stale) stories, blocks indicate keywords.
• del.icio.us most popular treemap from codecubed very cool-looking map of the most popular links from social bookmarking tool del.ico.us, by derek gottfrid.
• Microsoft Treemapper with Excel Add-In. Simple tool “to view hierarchical data conveniently from an Excel file.”
• Wikipedia World Population in a treemap by The Hive Group, as a demonstration of their Honeycomb technology. Very absorbing. Check out their views of iTunes’ Top 100 and Amazon.
• NewsIsFree also uses Honeycomb.
• CNET News’ Hot page.
• Great recent piece by Ben Shneiderman, inventor of the treemap. Didn’t get to talk to him but I hope to at some point.
• Wikipedia entry on Treemapping.
• Grokker search, a kind of treemap. (Thanks to a reader of the column for that.)
• WSJ’s Map of the Market, from SmartMoney. Uses Java, but pretty cool.

And, some software to visualize your hard drive (Windows, unless stated)

• FolderSizes strictly speaking not really a treemap, but a good way to visualize your drives via pie charts. “It can quickly isolate large, old, temporary, and duplicate files, or even show file distribution by type, attributes, or owner. All with multiple export formats, command-line support, shell context menu integration, and much more.” $40, free trial.
• SizeExplorer Features include folder size, graphical charts, file distribution statistics and reports (by size, extension, type, owner, date, etc.), biggest files, network support, snapshots, file management, printing of file listing, compress into ZIP file, exports to Excel, html, xml and text files, etc. $16-45
• DiskView another pie chart approach, but useful. DiskView integrates into your Windows Explorer, pretty well. New version also indicates how fragmented files are , and, if your hard disk supports it, its health
• SpaceMonger my favorite space-hogger hunter. Does a great job of mapping your hard drives and showing you what is taking up space. New version out soon, I’m told.
• DiskAnalyzer Similar to FolderSizes, though not as pretty. Free tho.
• WinDirStat free program which will create a treemap of your drive(s), based on the KDirStat for the K Desktop Environment, an interface for UNIX.
• DiskInventory X similar to WinDirStat/KDirStat, for Macs
• SequoiaView similar to the above. Linked to the company MagnaView, which sells commercial versions of its treemapping software "take input from virtually any information system, file or database, and support the development of an impressive range of visualizations". (thanks, Michael.)

You can also see a bunch of posts I’ve done on different kinds of newsmaps, including some interviews with folk like Marcus Weskamp and Craig Mod, creator of Buzztracker, here. I’m sure I’ve missed lots; please do let me know either by email or comments.

Comments

[Matthew Hurst]

Jeremy,

Nice post on treemaps. There are a number of reasons why search (and other) results are so restricted. One often cited barrier is the 'lazy user' problem - i.e. the difficulty of getting users to change behaviour and learn new tricks.

If you are cynical, you may subscribe to my more political view of why search results are so poorly presented:

Strategic Idea Ownership

[Ben Shneiderman]

Dear Jeremy,

I hope you know me as the originator of treemaps and coiner of the term. It is great fun to see how it is spreading.

I see your blog entry and wonder if you could send me your treemap article from WSJ. You may have seen my recen article on the B-Eye site.... best wishes... Ben Shneiderman

[Brad]

I use FolderSizes too, and the latest version actually DOES have a treemap view (of folders) built into it. Highly recommended.