the origins of δt

"The graphical convention is to plot time horizontally, along the x-axis. But the vertical scroll is a ubiquitous interface device, consistent with our experience of browsing. It frees up the rest of the screen to illustrate relationships, which is what δt is all about" - Liz Turner, lead designer.

The origins of this unique project date back to 2004, when a happy coincidence led to a series of conversations between Turner and Paul Ford, the writer, developer and Semantic Web evangelist. In his capacity as contributing editor of Harpers Magazine, Ford had developed a method of tagging news items and arranging them in timelines according to topics of interest, as part of the Harper's Weekly Review.

Having worked on earlier visualization devices, Turner was keen to push the limits of interaction. She brought the project to the Utrecht School of the Arts' faculty of Art, Media and Technology, where the concept was developed. Along the way, she recruited her partner David Boyce, an experienced engineer and software programmer, and together they developed the first prototype of what was to become the δt.project.

"When people saw it, the first thing they would say was 'This is really cool!' Then they would say 'I can imagine this working with this or that particular archive!' We heard this a lot, so we really knew we were on to something."

The next step was to develop the idea so that it could be used to tell different stories. What they needed was more data around which to build more timelines.

Wikipedia vs Freebase

The most obvious candidate for the next project was Wikipedia. Open, endless and home to a thriving community of grassroots editors, it seemed to be exactly what they were looking for. But extracting information suitable for visualization proved to be an impossible task.

"Wikipedia is an amazing resource, its strength being that it's very flexible. But at the end of the day the output is plain text, and it's incredibly difficult to produce machine readable data from that."

At Boyce's suggestion, they began work on the film archive, using the formatted data available from Freebase. Seeded from Wikipedia, the information has a more conventional database structure, and a schema that makes it possible to frame very complex queries. But that very structure also makes it harder for users to understand, and information is presented in tables, which rarely take account of ambiguity or error. A perfect candidate, then, for visualization.

"Like many people, we love movies. We were having so much fun with the discoveries we were making, that we thought, why not share them? And sure enough, when we started user testing, we found people couldn't tear themselves away!"

The δt.project is now moving into its next phase. With the launch of co5TARS, Iconomical's focus is now on developing the business. As members of Amsterdam's Media Guild, a project incubator for innovative start-ups, they are well-placed to take advantage of the their market niche.

"We've discovered a very effective way of presenting historical information. By framing the interface around a limited narrative, we can present data in an appropriate context. We think this will be very useful to content owners who are interested in enriching their archives with historical narrative, and as a means of interacting with other sources on the Internet."