Friday, July 02, 2010
Visual Baseball: Introducing Season TripTik
Posted by Kevin DameHappy Friday. This is a bit of a departure from my usual stuff, but for a while I've been wanting to find a better way to visualize a team's season schedule. A ways back I had a conversation with a casual fan who didn't realize that a baseball season is organized into a series of homestands and roadtrips. This got me thinking about visualizing a season in those terms. Here's a prototype of TripTik for the Red Sox 2010 season (updated through Wednesday). I find it helpful in looking back on what's transpired (the Sox have been dominant at home lately), as well as looking forward (the Sox have a big west coast road trip looming in late July).
Likes? Dislikes?
"The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing." - Edward Tufte.
Feel free to send comments, questions, and suggestions to Kevin via email.
Its very nice. But as you anticipate, I have problems with the color choice. I intuitively associate red with “stop” “out of money”—in other words, bad. It is green that means “Go!”, “money”, good!
When studying the chart, I have to constantly remind myself that red is wins and reverse my initial impression. The whole idea of your wonderful charts is to provide intuitive, at-a-glance understanding of information. And your continued use of red to mean good, for me, stands in the way of immediate intuitive communication. Other than that, I love all your stuff.