Synoptic is an experimental application for visualizing weather data in an unusual way, namely in 3-D. It can be explored interactively by choosing from the weather values, e.g. average temperature, wind speed, humidity and air pressure. There is a timeline for choosing the displayed period of time. This plus changing the viewing angle via mouse dragging is the basic navigation.
Roland Lößlein (weaintplastic.com), currently a student of the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg, Germany, and a good friend of mine, created this application during a class about information graphics led by Prof. Michael Stoll. You can admire many other resulting projects in his “show, don’t tell. student’s work” Flickr set.
Roland won a Malofiej silver award in the category “innovative formats” at the 17th Infographics World Summit at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. Congratulations!
CDN: Roland, tell us something about the study course you’re in and the infodesign classes.
Roland: It is called Multimedia and it’s a combination of design and computer science. You learn coding and design basics at the same time. At the end, you can specialize in one direction, in my case it’s infomation design. Prof. Stoll’s class is being offered every semester for some time now, and it always has an general topic the participating students have to approach. Last semester, it was weather.
What was your train of thought that led you to create synoptic?
I decided very quickly to develop a realtime updated interactive online thing, even I didn’t have a clue what this “thing” finally will be.
continue reading the interview here…
