ABC Fanpulse

April 2008 – Keywords: Website, Data Visualizer

ABC Fanpulse enables fans to explore and learn about the latest show topics in a highly visual way.

Prior to starting Variate Labs, Miles worked as a senior user experience designer at Schematic Inc. in Los Angeles. Miles designed the user experience for ABC Fanpulse. This project was ceated as a template to be used on all ABC shows. Fanpulse gives fans the ability to learn about the latest fan conversations around individual shows. We developed a unique scraping process that combs through thousands of fan blogs and posts and re-templates them into a simple and highly visual exploratory interface.

Dynamic Data Visualizer

A dynamic visualizer is shown at the top of all FanPulse pages. All blog posts are shown as individual dots that range in size depending on visitor popularity. Users can rate individual posts in the body of the page. The most popular stories are shown with the largest bubbles. A user can rollover individual bubbles to learn about the stories they contain.

Making Sense of the Data

The dynamic visualizer is highly customizable by the user. The visualizer offers multiple ways to view the same content set. Users can explore the latest posts by character, popularity, date, random and bunches. When a user switched between sections the date organizes in real-time.

Unified Content Set

The dynamic visualizer and the page body are all part of the same content set. All of the content in the visualizer is shown in the body of the page. A user can view stories by exploring, at top, or view the stories in a more chronological order at bottom. When a visitor selects a story at the bottom that story is marked in the visualizer.

Real-time Filters

At any time a user can select different filters to filter both the dynamic visualizer as well as the bottom content. Users can filter, in real-time, in an intuitive way that is fun, easy and visual.

This project was highly unique in its approach to data visualization and has been grants a number of patents.