Founder, Ben Fry Design, Cambridge, MA
Organized by Laura Kurgan and Sarah Williams, Co-Directors, Spatial Information Design Lab, GSAPP
Sponsored by The Data Visual Project: Documenting the Way Data is Structured, Visualized and Seen in Contemporary Society - A university-wide symposium run by Ed Schlossberg, ESI Design and hosted by the Spatial Information Design Lab at GSAPP

The amount of information our society generates is difficult to quantify, but one estimation holds that we now create more data each year than was produced in all prior human history. Generating actionable knowledge from this information is a critical design challenge with substantial economic, political and intellectual consequence. Data Visualization is a term that is increasing being used to describe strategies for interpreting and visualizing the mass amount of data we collect about our world. Ben Fry believes a collaborative multi-field approach is necessary to solve current data visualization and interpretation problems. He will discuss his approach as well as attempt to define this emerging field.

Fry received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as computer science, statistics, graphic design, and data visualization as a means for understanding information. During the 2006-2007 school year, Ben was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. Ben went on to become director of Seed Visualization and its Phyllotaxis Lab, a design laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts focused on understanding complex data. Ben now runs his own design firm focusing on Data Visualization.

The Data Visual, is a university-wide symposium run by Ed Schlossberg of ESI Design and hosted by the Spatial Information Design Lab at GSAPP introduces the possibility of collaboration between academic disciplines working with data that demonstrate visual potential - from the computer sciences to biology to journalism.