Important Note
Required software: Java 1.4 or above
Recommended browser: Either Firefox 1.0.6 (or above) or IE 6 (or above)
The following application may not be fully accessibility-compliant
or bug-free because it is an emerging technology prototype or proof
of concept currently under development in IBM research and
development labs.
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What is Many Eyes?
Many Eyes is a service that combines information visualization with social software, enabling collaborative visualization by groups of users.
The service presents a set of interactive visualizations that provide insight into a variety of topics, varying from cereal nutrition data to fertility rates of countries worldwide. In addition, visitors are able to upload new data sets and create their own visualizations.
Through the creation of new visualizations, discussion forums, and the addition of new data sets, visitors to Many Eyes can do more than merely look at data: They can truly collaborate around it. Users can point out interesting findings, share possible explanations, ask questions, and contribute new information to the site. The result is a process of social data analysis that goes beyond mere visualization: Also provided are additional context and explanations, faster access to interesting findings, and the ability to share visualizations with colleagues.
How does it work?
The heart of the site is a collection of data visualizations. Users might want to begin by browsing through these collections or by simply exploring. The visualizations are based on a collection of publicly-shared data sets held on this site. One can see that many data sets and visualizations are the subject of active discussions. One can also go directly to the latest comments that other users have made.
If users have data that they would like to share, they can add it to the collection. After it is on the site, it will be available for others to see, talk about, and visualize. One can choose from an array of chart and graph types to make one's own visualization.
| About the technology authors |
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 Jesse Kriss joined the Visual Communication Lab as a research developer in 2004. Whether working on information visualization, interaction design, or tools for artistic performance, he is interested in shortening the feedback loop between creation and response so that time can be spent reacting and improving the idea rather than dealing with the tools themselves.
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 Matt McKeon joined the Visual Communication Lab as a research developer in 2006. His interests include building usable platforms for social data analysis, designing tools to support network-enabled communities, and moving information off of the screen and into the world around us.
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 Frank van Ham, Ph.D., joined the Visual Communication Lab as a post-doctoral researcher in 2006. His research interests include large-scale information visualization, graph visualization, and language processing. Dr. van Ham has created a number of diverse visualizations that provide insight into large graphs (with more than 50,000 nodes) from diverse application areas, including social networks, software systems, and finite automata.
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 Fernanda B. Viégas, Ph.D., joined the Visual Communication Lab as a research staff member in 2005. Her research focuses on the social side of visualization, exploring collaborative uses of visual applications. Dr. Viégas is well known for her work on the representation of online communities to support online identity, collective memory, and story-telling. Some of her previous projects explored e-mail archives, newsgroup conversations, chatroom interactions, and the editing history of wiki pages. Her work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston and in galleries in New York and Los Angeles.
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 Martin Wattenberg, Ph.D., created the Visual Communication Lab in 2004. He is a mathematician whose research interests include information visualization and its application to collaborative computing, journalism, bioinformatics, and art. Dr. Wattenberg is well known for artistic data visualization of such disparate information sources as music, museum collections, and Web searches.
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Date Posted: January 23, 2007
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