I like most people spend my day to day life wading through data. In between emails and facebook I work in online advertising and in my first week my boss said to me “You gotta learn to love the data.” And whilst I have learned to get along with data it’s a love hate relationship.

In my surfing the other day I came across a talk that JeffreyVeen did at the Web 2.0 Expo recently on designing for Big Data. Veen is one of the founding partners of Adaptive Path and probably most well know for his work on Measure Maps which was scooped up by Google in 2006, that also took Veen with them to work on Analytics.

Whilst coming from a strong Software, data analytics background he is able to distill a few of his key design principles that can be applied to a whole range of disciplines. It’s a good talk and definitely worth the 20 minutes if you have them. But I just wanted to share one example he used – that of Harry Beck’s London Underground Tube Map.

The iconic linear, non -geographic map was created in 1931 by engineering draftsman Harry Beck and has stood the test of time with his design concept still being used today as a standard for train systems around the world.

Rather than trying to superimpose a diagram of the rail system over a geographic road map Beck drew on his previous experience working with switch boards and created a linear diagram that closely resembled electrical schematic diagrams. Beck saw that train passengers had no real need or care for the geographic accuracy, but simply wanted to know which train to catch to get from A – B.

However if this map was designed for drivers it would be completely useless to them and that’s the take away – Beck designed for his users and gave them the information they need with no excess clutter, and that’s a challenging thing to do.

Other good examples Veen used for data design were Dr John Snow’s work mapping the cholera outbreak and Charles Joseph Minard’s depiction of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812.