By Cemre Güngör
Most of the apps on TripIt’s open platform assist you with your upcoming or current trips. However, I discovered a reflective benefit to using TripIt: you create a physical record of where in the world you have been.
So as my final thesis project at NYU's Brooklyn Experimental Media Center, I experimented with visualizing data from TripIt to look back at my own (and other people's) travel history.
I thought creating a physical object would let the data expose itself in very interesting ways.
While I started off with visualizing itineraries on a map, I quickly realized that plotting flights on a map wasn't translating to something that had emotional impact.
So I started looking into what makes trips memorable.
I abandoned the map in favor of an abstract representation that shows each trip in relative locations to home, and depicted their length and purpose.
I built my final object by laser cutting, painting and stacking plates of acrylic.
While it is fun to examine and attractive to look at, for the person it is made for, it functions as a reverse time machine, reminding her of one year of travels.
To get your trip data visualized by Cemre, visit http://cem.re/tripit/.
Love the concept. Great idea. I would like to get one every year
Posted by: Alexandre Giess | January 24, 2012 at 02:06 PM
Very cool. Would love to be able to just show a year at a time as well.
Posted by: Chris | January 24, 2012 at 05:32 PM
great job cemre :)
Posted by: Umut Erhan | January 25, 2012 at 04:59 AM
Cemre, thanks very much for that. It's a very nice visualization. I wish TripIt would buy the code and make it available as a feature at least for Pro users. One small nit to pick: Would have been nice if the generated page includes all the CSS information to make it more easy to save the file.
Posted by: Christian | January 25, 2012 at 10:20 AM
Great job!
Posted by: cruiser | January 25, 2012 at 11:53 AM
Nice one!
Posted by: Mark Thomas | January 27, 2012 at 07:58 AM
nive job.great visualization. i would love to get one
Posted by: Qatar living | January 28, 2012 at 03:47 AM
Very nice. Would have been cool to be able to post to FB/Google + with perhaps a nod to you as the designer.
Posted by: Keith | January 29, 2012 at 05:29 PM
Cool ... add a facebook/Google+ link and it goes out to the world, would be great if there would be any time dimension (a kind away from home vector)and surely a 'days spend in a city/destination as a circle size' over a world/google map.
Posted by: Carsten Dohrmann | January 29, 2012 at 11:17 PM
Love it. And would also love to be able to post it to FB!
Posted by: Martha | January 30, 2012 at 09:24 PM