The Smart Spider- “Where content and visualization come together”

Design Niko Elsen, Concept Michael Herrmann.

An excellent example of visualisation in Political opinion mapping is the Sotomo Research Project (in German) lead by Michael Hermann  from Zurich University. They were asked by the European Union to create a way for voters in European Parliamentary elections to more easily understand the where both political parties and individual candidates stood on the broad political topics. Hermann’s “SmartSpider” has gathered a significant amount of interest as “the next best thing” in Visualizing Politics and spectrums. 

The Political Compass

One important and growing theme in examples of good Vofo from around the world is the idea of getting voters and politicians alike to easily understand where each stands in a broad political spectrum.

Traditionally this is most easily explained as the Left-Right political continuum, as detailed by David MaCandless in this info-graphic. But often it is seen as having multiple stages as this spectrum shows.

Political Scientists often argue however that this over simplifies politics and doesn’t capture the broad ranges of issues, let alone political party positions that are represented.

Political Information Can be Beautiful

Articulating how the VOFO problem is a Design Problem is effortlessly captured by David MacCandless in this now infamous TED talk in 2010.

His comments in the last couple of minutes surrounding this particular info-graphic and how visual explanations literally “pour explanation” onto a reader is exactly the kind of user experience with information this blog will be exploring.

A real practical problem with color and politics however is almost self evident in the fact that this “non-US alternative” was also produced.