Uber Open Sources Its Data Visualization Framework

April 7, 2017 by Dave Haynes

Via TechCrunch

If your company is looking into data visualization, and has developers eager to have a run at it, here’s a pretty sophisticated open source development framework that Uber – yeah, that Uber – has made available.

The data visualization framework used internally by the ride-share company to do things like visualize customer experiences was made available last fall and, reports TechCrunch, now has some big updates “that should help make it more useful to external teams and individuals looking for interesting ways to take their data and turn it into compelling visual representations.”

“The main idea behind this library is that it’s a WebGL-powered framework that is designed for exploring and visualizing data assets at scale,” Nicolas Garcia Belmonte, Uber’s head of data visualization, told TechCrunch in regards to why the tool exists to begin with. “There’s a lot of geospatial stuff that we do here, as well, as you can probably imagine from the core business, so we visualize a lot of data on maps.”

Uber, reports TechCrunch, has used the tool internally for various purposes, including visualizing the pick-up and drop-off experience, as a way to make material the insights it can gather from the considerable stock of data it gathers from its ride hailing business. Open sourcing the project, according to Belmonte, is a way to help others be able to quickly and easily visualize and explore their own data sets, including very large collections.

The updates to the framework available today make it possible to go beyond maps, to visual data sets from machine learning and other more abstract use cases, including network traffic and more. The team also focused on usability, making it easier than ever to work with for developers with better documentation, as well as new demonstration projects.

Hat Tip to Jason Cremins for flagging this …

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