Open Source Software and Drawing on a Computer (With and Without a Metric)

Recently, I’ve adopted an open source hunger: every time I want some software made, I figure someone has already made it and someone has already made it open sourced. For those that don’t know, open source basically means that the software’s underlying code is openly available and can be changed and redistributed. (Software like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Vista does not have its code available for anyone to use.)

It so happens that many developers of open source software also want to distribute their software free-of-charge. This is where I come in.

I’ve been thinking about the power of visualization, inspired in a large part by Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I thought to try and visualize all sorts of things, from my academic schedule to geometry problems. (Actually, this came up for a project I was working on at school.) So I searched for open source and free-of-charge software to do so.

Two of them worked out particularly well: GeoGebra and XMind.

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As you can imagine, GeoGebra is a software for mathematics users, particularly those interested in geometry and algebra (the kind taught in high schools). I just recently used it to solve a puzzle posted by Jason Zimba. But don’t worry, I don’t want to go into the math, just the story behind drawings. So, why is this software so great?

Well, in geometry, we’re concerned about lines, distances, and shapes. If it’s a circle you’re drawing, it has to be curved like a circle. If it’s a line, it needs to be straight. And, if it’s too small to see the details, you need to redraw it again.

I had I hated this part of geometry. It seemed like a waste of time. Couldn’t you just calculate it somehow? There must be some other way besides drawing. I avoided drawing the diagrams every time I could get away with it (and often more).

What this really meant, though, was that I didn’t know how to draw nicely, and I hated having to redraw a diagram because I messed up one part. I just thought that I hated the diagrams because that process of drawing and revision was tied into the use of the diagrams.

Thanks to GeoGebra, I am now able to happily make geometric diagrams, and enjoy their use, without having to worry about the details of drawing. You could say that I’m a supporter of the separation between drawing and visualization.

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XMind has a different intention. Billed as a “mind-mapping software” it is supposed to help you organize your thoughts. You know those “bubble” charts that you’re taught to make to brainstorm or take notes? That’s what this is supposed to do.

How is this different than geometry? Certainly, in both cases we care about drawing, and it’s in the visualization that we retain the information. But, instead of preserving specific distances and shapes, it wants to preserve relationships, ie. connected or not connected.

As you might guess, I hated using bubble charts. I always struggled to organize it so that my ideas would fit on one page. Some branches would take up more space than others and it was hard to keep items of the same level of importance together. Why not just make a list? Or even better, an outline?

Well, I decided to give XMind a shot anyway. It couldn’t hurt, and it was free-of-charge.

As it turns out, once I learned the keyboard shortcuts, I thoroughly enjoyed using the program. The computer managed the spacing and hierarchy for me. I could delete or undo instantly. And the keyboard shortcuts actually made this process faster than drawing on a piece of paper. Lastly, I was able to add or remove a bunch of different smaller symbols, such as relationships, surrounding bubbles, or labels that might name the priority level or status of completion.

And here it was again, the separation between the visualization and the tedious drawing. The computer took care of all the incidental actions, such as differentiating levels of information with different size and font. I just typed in what was important—the items and their relationships.

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What does this mean? Well, I decided not to review either software above in terms of its own genre. I didn’t seek out other geometry software or other mind-mapping software. What I did want to pay attention, though, was the place of computers in visualization.

I think a lot of people have used Excel to make visualizations such as bar graphs, but there are other sorts of visualizations as well. Before using either software above, though, I didn’t think I’d be convinced of their usefulness in their own visualizations.

But after using both, I’ve been able to separate the tedious activities from the substance of the visualization and gratefully letting the computer take care of the tedious work. Then, both visuals seemed natural and intuitive.

I wonder what place the computer has in future kinds of visualizations. Can we design machines the way Tony Stark, the protagonist in the movie Iron Man, designs his powerful machine suit? Can voice commands and 3-D motion be incorporated into a program so that a user has even more flexibility in design? What tedious work can we weed out next, so that can we can focus on the essentials? And how much more productive and creative would we be?

Museum of Making Music

Looking to discover American pop music through the 1900’s? That’s what the Museum of Making Music promises to help you do, located in sunny Carlsbad, California, near San Diego. I went there in late August 2008, and this raised for me some interesting questions on how to communicate information in a museum setting.

(Alright, I know that there’s more time going back to summer 2008 than there is time until summer 2009, but I took notes.)

I’ll describe what I saw first, and then I’ll close with my own reflections.

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I thought I’d go when I was in the area because of my own interest in music. I have played a few instruments and even composed a few pieces of music myself. Also, it was only $7.

As we moved past the greeter, who was incredibly friendly and gave an overview of the exhibits, I found myself in the 1900’s area. They had audio samples, including the John Philip Sousa Band and music from dance halls. This was great, and naturally, expected, for a museum of music, and they were scattered about in all the different sections.

There was actually a fairly cohesive narrative throughout the entire museum. Each section moved decade to decade, and there were instruments, information panels, as well as sound samples.

The greeter had failed to mention the special exhibits advertised on the website on violins and guitars (separately), but they were in there. The violins were separate from the main narrative, but what I think was the special guitar exhibit was integrated pretty seamlessly.

I think all of this was fine, with sound, visuals, and text information. Certainly, I got my money’s worth. But that was it, the museum just seemed “fine.”

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The first thing I noticed was that in the 1900’s the audio samples conflicted with the sound samples of instruments just twenty feet away. It was distracting when listening to some of the ballads, especially since one of the instrument sounds was a tuba playing a really active bass line. As I moved through the museum, I found that there were several audio samples that didn’t play at all—including the ones for an entire section on early jazz music.

Visually, the arrangements were confusing. In the early decades, from the 1900’s-1920’s, they would put violins with trumpets with banjos in the same case without any real explanation. I suppose for the non-musician, there wouldn’t be much of a distinction, but that’s part of the problem: there is a distinction between violins, trumpets, and banjos. They sound different, and are used in very different musical settings.

Some exhibits were a bit tedious. There were maybe 40 violins on display of different styles in their featured exhibit. A video panel was on the side, visually showing the differences in violins. I thought the video was okay, but it seemed like the expectation was then to take the new knowledge and explore the violins in the case. That seemed like a bit much, even for a musician (who doesn’t play the violin, however). I really only wanted to hear any differences between the makes

Lastly, visitor participation was strange. While I took my time in all of the areas, absorbing the information that was available, families with children would just rush through. The children would push the buttons without waiting for the audio track to finish, and the parents, naturally, would follow along. The children were given a worksheet to complete, and even their parents would just ask “Did you find the answer yet?”

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Where does all this leave us? I had some thoughts on museums in general.

Narrative. I appreciated the narrative that the museum weaved for us, and while there doesn’t have to be a straight narrative in every museum, there should be some sort of organizing structure. There was one path through this museum with clearly labeled sections and recurring themes in the information panels. That allows us to digest the information in reasonable chunks and even trace different themes across the sections. This is true for every sort of communication, but I hadn’t realized it was also true of museums.

Participation. While I got to choose which audio samples I listened to or not, there didn’t seem to be too much activity on my part. In the end, I almost felt as if I had to wade through the information, as if trying to finish a long article. There was too much to read (although maybe that is to be expected), and not enough to pull me from reading to reading. I didn’t have in my head too many guiding questions. Instead of actively searching for information, it was passive skimming. There weren’t any guiding themes explicitly proposed by the museum either. I only caught on after three or four decades. (Perhaps I am slow…)

Balance of medium. Since this was a museum about music, that should have been the main focus. Instead, there was way more visual information than audio information, including way too many displays of instruments without audio samples. And in general, a museum should have as its medium the focus on the subject matter, not just displays or expository material. I can go to the internet for those.

Information elsewhere. I could have found images of a variety of instruments put together, just by looking up "musical instruments." I could have enjoyed the violin video on youtube without having a case of 40 violins waiting for me. I wanted the museum to give me something that I can't find elsewhere. This means more than providing information, but combining selected bits with engaging activities.

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These are just some starting points for me to think about museums in a structured way. I’ve skipped over a few aspects like location and advertising because at this point, they seemed less instructive.

Overall assessment of this museum: Lots of information is nice, but not enough to make a museum. The content must be filtered until it creates a graspable experience by the visitor. In other words, “just show me the good stuff, and I’ll look up the rest later.”