Revealing tourist footprints from big data.
The powerful insights inside big datasets can get lost without a carefully designed visualisation that reveals the data simply and clearly. But more than that, you miss the opportunities for people to look into the data, create their own stories and learn something new about their world, something which could stay with them for years to come. Working with our friends at BBVA Data and Analytics and CARTO, we developed a series of visualisations for people to learn about the spending behaviour of tourists in Spain during July and August 2014. With our unique blend of pioneering design principles and innovative coding, we turned 5.4 million anonymised credit card transactions into “a piece of artwork” – almost fit for the Prado!
Over five million records is a rather large amount of data to store, especially when you add a geospatial dimension. Instead of simplifying or splitting up the transactions to make them easy to process, the whole dataset was loaded into CARTO and queried when needed using their SQL API. To produce a cohesive visualization made up of multiple maps and timelines that run in unison, we modified and extended CARTO's Torque.js library, so you can quickly jump back and forth in time and drill down to the transactions you want to see.
Vizzuality is committed to making data easy to look at and understand, so everyone can find their own angle on the data. Our designers paid close attention to crafting an interface that lends itself to clear presentation and powerful analysis. They also structured the visualisations into four smaller, digestible tabs, providing a host of opportunities to gain deep understanding of all the facets of this dataset. Finished with pixel perfect implementation, we created a beautiful, usable, interactive visualisation.
How we visualised 5.4 million data points.
Check it online.What are people saying about it?
Next project.
Forest Watcher.