A picture of health

I enjoyed speaking at the Design of Understanding event at St Bride Library the week before last. It was good to hear some feedback from the design community about the work I'm doing in communicating scientific data with graphics. I was also really impressed by the wonderful visual notes produced by not one but two of the delegates at the event! The first from Boon Yew Chew: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaremfan/8414252564/in/set-72157632608232968/ I think it's a really good summary. I like the quick sketches to remind him of three of my graphics - the Pharma Town, GOfER and the climate change arrow / box graphics. Also very pleased to hear that he thinks graphics should be academic work in their own right, although it is mostly written papers that get published (albeit with occasional diagrams). It's always a challenge that design academics (and students) face. One point of clarification - I don't think that bar and pie charts are necessarily A Bad Thing...

pharma town video from Will Stahl-Timmins on Vimeo . It looks like we've done it! 100 votes reached on Friday evening (putting us even further ahead)... So without further ado, here is the promised video of the design process. Many thanks to everyone that voted. If you haven't done so yet, voting is open until 23:59 on Mon 12th Nov (ie today...) Voting site:  http://bit.ly/Q8YqKe

Exciting news: My Pharma Transport Town poster has been shortlisted for a major science visualisation award! (the NSF/AAAS science and engineering visualisation challenge). Of the 10 shortlisted entries in my category, the winner, runner(s)-up and "people's choice" will be published in the prestigious Science journal. I'd really appreciate a vote for the people's choice at: http://bit.ly/Q8YqKe To vote, you first need to register (name, email, password). Then log in, select "posters and graphics" from the drop-down at the top right of the page, then click "vote for this entry" by the poster. The idea of the poster is to show the complex systems by which pharmaceutical products end up in our environment, and can then be exposed to people and animals in unintended ways. We're also trying to show that there are many different ways in which these exposures could be reduced. I'd also be very grateful if you could share this link...

This was a really enjoyable (if exhausting) project to work on. The brief? To expand on a traditional "pharmaceutical transport" diagram - which shows what happens to drugs we use once we have consumed or disposed of them. We ended up creating the information graphic above, which is intended to reveal to the viewer their own place in a complex system - with many loops, feedbacks and choices to be made.. I was working with two colleagues at the University of Exeter / University of Plymouth - Dr Clare Redshaw, an environmental chemist, and Dr Mat White, a behavioural psychologist. We wanted to expand a "traditional" pharmaceutical transport diagram (from Petrović et al. 2003), and perhaps work towards an academic paper on the subject. These diagrams normally start with what happens when we dispose of the pharmaceutical products that we use every day. As you can see from our scrawled annotations, we wanted to include what happens "upstream" of this poin...

It's always nice when one of my colleagues approaches me with some data they're really excited about. In this case it was Dr Ben Wheeler, who had been analysing UK census data, and found a relationship between how close people live to the coast and their self-reported quality of health. It fell to me to try and present the relationship he had found visually - and in a very small space, for publication in a scientific journal. I can talk about the development process now, as the paper has recently been published: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829212001220 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18856680 I knew from the outset that I wanted the resulting figure to look authoritative, given the context of use in a scientific journal. It of course needed to communicate the results accurately and clearly, but I also wanted it to quickly reveal to the reader what the data points were showing them. This is what I had to work with - two bar charts, som...

In honour of the Annual Information is Beautiful Awards ( http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/ ) I've been encouraged to do some more work on my seasonal food calendar. I've made a new version for the competition, which has two wheels - one for fruit and vegetables, and one for seafood and game. I've mounted the prints of these on custom-built wooden cogs, so that I can turn them at the same speed simultaneously, making a really pleasing wood-on-wood sound as well! I've also made a short (~3 min) video explaining the project: You can download a PDF of each of the calendars too - feel free to print them out and have a go with them: Fruit and vegetables calendar Game and seafood calendar I'd welcome any comments or feedback from you if you use them. What works for you? What could be better? What should I make an information graphic about next? Ideas involving environment / health data particularly welcome :)

My PhD thesis, entitled Information Graphics in Health Technology Assessment has been accepted by the Peninsula Medical School (Universities of Exeter and Plymouth). If you have a spare few weeks to read it, it's available here: http://sites.pcmd.ac.uk/infographics/thesis/index.php If you don't have a few spare weeks, and you just want to see a few pretty information graphics, just read Chapter 1.1. If you're really into information graphics, the beginning of Chapter 4 might be of interest too, and perhaps the design process model I use (Chapter 2.2 for that). If you're an HTA researcher, you need to read the whole thing. Oh, okay, if you're really short on time, skip to the two prototype tests. Have a look at the introduction and conclusion (particularly the "future development of graphic" sections of these). Also the Discussion Chapter (7) might be a good bet. Enjoy!