Safe Sex in Times of H1N1

Customers of a certain establishment in Germany are provided with additional information to help them decide to enter the premises.
It may just work in this context ... however, how rational are men likely to be at this point?

Funny though this may seem as a piece of information, for me it raised the question on how information design can contribute towards changing awareness about the realities of prostitution and a change of policies - criminalising the abusers, not the abused. Any ideas? More information on prostitution and human trafficking in a video on the website of the European Women's Lobby.

Green lifestyle 2.0

GOOD magazine has taken interactive information design to a new level. The "Roadmap to Harmony" leads you to facts and figures about the environment, energy, education, health and more. It delves into exciting concepts, ideas and developments.
Long gone are the days when responsible living meant lumpy hand-knitted sweaters, Birkenstocks (yes, they were so uncool in the 1970s) and commune living with questionable hygene.
No more excuses - go explore ...

Photos from the DD4D conference

Posted by students who participated in the DD4me project.


Find more photos like this on DD4me

Food Labeling II: real food or imitation products?

The next can of worms opens up in the discussion of labeling imitation foods.
Surprise, surprise, the cheese we get on our pizza is not really cheese but an industrial product that has never seen the inside of a cow.
Or ham that mostly consists of water, binding agents and assorted (but clearly regulated) bits of meat.
Good news for Vegans? A healthier option to real ham? The cause of the controversy is not so much whether it is better for you, but that it is clearly announced to consumers that they are eating an imitation product and not the real thing.
The fun for regulators and information designers is just beginning.

The food labeling discussion, like the weather, is heating up

Today's Daily Telegraph online writes about the rival systems of gda (guidance for daily allowance in %) and traffic-light labeling (giving red, amber or green traffic lights for levels of sugar, fat and salt content). The UK Food Standards Agency advocates the traffic-light scheme.

Which one better supports decision-making, helps change eating habits? What can't be helpful for consumers are conflicting systems.

One behavioural change worth noting ...
A representative of the Austrian Consumer Agency quoted a study where British teenagers buy red label only - it's uncool to eat healthy food. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the study so far, but I'll keep you posted.

Search Engine with Added Value

Talking about Data Designed for Decisions - a mind-boggling new search engine delivering not just what I was looking for, but giving context and comparison, turning data into knowledge before your very eyes. I'd say it's magic, Stephen Wolfram says it's Maths.

Check out this screencast introducing Wolfram Alpha.

Cultural Stereotypes

Some thoughts while watching Jonathan Jarvis’s movie ... (see last post below).

At one point he describes typical, responsible Prime-Mortgage customers: man, woman, child, dog. Just before he got to the Sub-Prime customers I briefly wondered how he would visualise irresponsible customers - and got exactly what I expected: lots of children, parents smoking and obviously out of shape, all very disorderly.



This reminded me of how strong our cultural stereotypes are. How else would one draw a pictogram of “irresponsible people”?

How do we picture ourselves? A German design agency - kognito - has sent out a questionnaire to look at cultural pictograms, here is the current state of the vote for different “pictonalities“. The left column shows the country of origin of the voters.

GOOD Magazine Makes Sense of the Financial Mess

A competition for the best infographics on the current financial crisis got some beautiful results. Take some time and enjoy - you may learn something new!
More on GOOD.

And the winner is .... a static version of this great video:


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Correct graph, wrong visual message

Reading the header about rising budget deficits and looking at this - correct - graph showing the negative development forced me to actually think about what I was seeing first thing in the morning.

7 am with only half a coffee I'm not at my best, but it was interesting how wrong the visual felt even before I had started to look at the actual content.

One more case in point that visual communication is not an issue in Austrian print media, it's a way to break up the text and to give a semblance of "seriousness", of factual information.

It's sad that quality print media here, who are struggling to survive anyway, have still not embraced the power of good information graphics.