A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the Eyeo Festival, a gathering of the world's best data visualizers, creative coders, and other like-minded folks. Over three packed days, sessions tackled thought-provoking topics such as the role of data visualization in social justice and how the seemingly absurd can contribute towards the greater good. Speakers presented groundbreaking work, some for the first time. Interspersed were workshops ranging from an introductory course to physical computing with the SparkFun ProtoSnap Arduino board, to a hands-on "conditional drawing" lab. In all, it was an incredibly inspiring experience.

Energized by the conference, I took a quick stab at making a few of my own visualization experiments, focusing on the subjects closest at hand: fellow employees at Odopod. Here’s an example of one question I attempted to answer: Assuming work begins at 10AM, what does everyone's morning commute look like? Using self-reported data from Odopod's own, I was able to plot a simplified visualization of the daily morning migration.

Click here to see the visualization in action »

What you’re seeing is a simplified map of the Bay Area, with the starting points of various Odopod employees, flashing as they leave the house in the morning. Hover on the dots to reveal who they represent, click & drag the bar graph to scrub through the timeline. In a future version, we might plug this in to Google Map's API and try to implement intelligent path-finding, or explore differentiation between transportation methods (such as drivers vs. walkers). For now though, I think it's a fun little diversion that lets us make some observations that we normally wouldn't be able to.

I look forward to utilizing the skills I’ve learned in future projects here at Odopod.