131 | Peak Spotting

Data Stories

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“Would you define this as a dashboard?” The question provoked quite a reaction!

In this episode, we talk about Peak Spotting, a new data visualization tool designed to help capacity managers at the German railway Deutsche Bahn handle passenger loads within the train system.

We recorded the episode live in Berlin, all together in the same room, with Moritz, the creative lead of the project, as well as the project’s other collaborators: project director Christian Au, technical lead Stephan Thiel, and designer Christian Laesser.

We talk about how the project started, the process the team followed to design the tool, how people at the German railway are using it, finding innovation within big companies, and the role of visualization in the movement towards automation.

Enjoy the show!

Links

• • Christian Au

• • Christian Laesser

• • Stephan Thiel

• • Moritz’s OpenVisConf keynote

• • Moritz’s writeup of the project

• • Studio NAND’s writeup of the project
  • Christian Laesser’s writeup of the project

• • Fast Company’s coverage of the project

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http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Untitled-Project-Made-by-Headliner-3.mp4

Chapters

1. Welcome to Data Stories! (00:00:25)

2. Our topic today: Peak Spotting (00:02:02)

http://truth-and-beauty.net/projects/peakspotting

3. Our guests: Christian Au (00:02:46)

https://www.hs-mainz.de/en/directory/person/christian-au/

4. Christian Laesser (00:03:02)

https://christianlaesser.com

5. Stephan Thiel (00:03:13)

http://nand.io

6. What is Peak Spotting? (00:03:41)

https://www.fastcompany.com/90147145/the-data-viz-thats-helping-transform-a-45-billion-company

7. How did the project start? (00:07:13)

8. Starting the project with questions not data! (00:11:21)

9. What was the process of Peak Spotting? (00:13:51)

10. How did you develop prototypes? (00:15:42)

11. What is the number and type of users? (00:18:55)

12. The idea of UX metrics! (00:20:15)

13. How do you develop Peak Spotting further? (00:23:28)

14. The benefit and challenge of user requests! (00:25:19)

15. Evolution of the tool with the needs of the users. (00:26:03)

16. From visualization to automation? (00:28:22)

17. Possible usage for the public! (00:30:58)

18. How to do such an innovative project in a big corporation? (00:32:57)

19. Get in touch with us and support us on Patreon! (00:38:44)

https://www.patreon.com/datastories