Notebook
Here's where we post periodic updates on what we've been up to at Fathom. Reflections on the interesting stories that emerge from our client work, side projects, after-hours rabbitholes, and other miscellaneous threads of inquiry.
Here at Fathom we hit the ground running in 2011. We wrapped up a touch screen installation for the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in January, helping our friends at GE shine the spotlight on all of their Ecomagination initiatives. The GE booth — a small city block is the more apt description — was an eco playground of residential wind turbines, electric cars, Wattstations, and energy efficient appliances.
In the fall of 2010, GE partnered with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health to conduct a sweeping survey of health perceptions within the Saudi population, as well as trends in eating, beverage consumption, and fitness habits among Saudi consumers. We developed an online tool that not only presented the results of this study, but continues collecting survey responses from visitors to the GE Middle East Healthymagination site.
We're looking for people to join us at Fathom. For all the positions, you'll be creating work like you see on fathom.info, plus more mobile projects (Android, iOS, JavaScript) and the occasional installation piece. If you're a developer, design skills are a plus. Or if you're a designer, same goes for coding.
Marius Watz, curator of NODE10’s exhibition abstrakt Abstrakt - The Systemized World, recently invited Ben to participate. All Streets, a map of the United States made by marking nothing but the country's roads, is now up at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.
Ben recently spoke and gave workshops at UX Week in San Francisco. He talked about data and user experience: how to make data sets into storytelling.
Fathom moved into new offices in September, from temporary space in Cambridge across the river to a beautifully restored cigar factory on Cambridge Street in Boston. The large copper sign on the front declares it to be the PUFFER'S BUILDING, and it sits at the edge of Beacon Hill, one of Boston's oldest neighborhoods.
We just finished a project in conjunction with NBC News and The Gates Foundation related to education. The national scorecard allows parents to locate available school performance data, compare schools within districts and see state results. Do you know what state has the highest high school graduation rate in the country — or the lowest?
GE has just launched two visualization sites. We worked on the design for the first, which is an easy to access resource of the work they've been doing over the past year across healthymagination and ecomagination and can be found here: ge.com/visualization.
Our latest project for GE is about the striking shifts in age for eight developed nations. A large portion of Japan's population is between 60-64, and as that group grows older, it will have a significant impact on healthcare and the country's economy. A similar spike is seen amongst ages 35-39, which will have a similar effect a generation later.
The band is gonna take a short break, but we'll be back in 15 minutes.