How People Use Firefox – Mozilla Open Data Visualization Competition

Are you an data visualization wizard?

Mozilla Labs and the Mozilla Metrics Team, together with the growing Mozilla Research initiative, are hosting a Open Data Visualization Competition based on Test Pilot data.

For this competition we’d like to explore creative visual answers to the question: “How do people use Firefox?” For example, visualizations that investigate general usage patterns, reveal interesting user behavior, or explore browser performance. We are looking for compelling visualizations that tell detailed, meaningful and yet easy-to-interpret stories about interesting user activities.

The Data

This competition is based on Mozilla’s own open data program, Test Pilot. Test Pliot is a user research platform that collecting structured user data through Firefox. All data is gathered through pre-defined Test Pilot studies which aim to explore how people use their web browser and the Internet.

Currently, over 1 million Firefox users from all over the world participate in Test Pilot studies. The goal for this platform is to encourage everyone from all skill levels to improve the Web experience by conducting and participating in these studies. Test Pilot study results are made available under open licenses, with the data being anonymized before release. (For more information about the Test Pilot data policy, please check Privacy Policy.)

For this challenge, we will use data from two recent Test Pilot studies:
* A Week in the Life of a Browser – v2
* Firefox 4 Beta Interface – Round 2

Partners and Judges

We are honored to have David Smith from Revolution Analytics partnering with us and serving as a special judge. Members from Mozilla Labs and Mozilla Metrics will form the rest of the judging panel.

Prizes

To recognize the awesome work from participants, some great prizes are at stake:
* Grand prize will be a $300 Amazon gift card
* Two “Best in Class” teams will receive a set of Edward Tufte’s books

We’ll also present all submissions on the Test Pilot website and Mozilla Metrics blog in a special post to highlight your work.

Join the competition!

You can choose any tools you like for your analysis and visualization, including but not limited to: R, Matlab, Protovis, Processing or IBM many eyes. You can participate solo or team up with other people. You are also welcome to enter as many times as you like. If you are interested to join the competition, here are the important dates:

  • Nov. 17th: Check the official Competition page on Nov. 17th to download the data
  • Dec.5th : Go here to submit your results and enter the competition before Dec.5th.
  • Dec. 14th: Winning visualizations will be announced on Dec. 14th.

To facilitate the free exchange of ideas, all visualizations and other contributions you make to this challenge must be contributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Please read the official Competition page for more details. Also follow @moztestpilot on Twitter for news and updates.