GED Viz, A Data Storytelling Tool

I had the honor and pleasure to keynote an event in Berlin recently that introduced a new visualization tool to the world, GED Viz. What makes it stand out from other web-based visualization tools is its focus on particular data, and the ability to create not just individual views, but little stories.

GED stands for Global Economic Dynamics, which explains where the motivation for the project actually came from: the need to show the underlying data when explaining global relationships based on the movement of goods, money, and people between countries.

The visualization is essentially a chord diagram, showing the countries around a circle and connecting them with bands through the center. When creating a visualization, the user can pick from a list of countries and groups of countries (like the OECD), as well as a variety of metrics to show.

What interests me about the project more than the basic visualization is the ability to create little slideshows, or stories. These can be embedded in web sites, like in this story on China and India (as well as below, unless you read this in a newsreader). You can click through the steps, mouse over the dots to see thumbnails, and mouse over the main view to see numbers.

When you open that slideshow in edit mode (by clicking in the lower right), you can create new slides and delete or rearrange existing ones. Slides have captions too, which are shown in the upper left. Slide [...]