A team of Purdue Polytechnic students led by Hannah Zong, assistant professor of practice in the School of Applied and Creative Computing, has received international recognition for developing a sophisticated web platform that visualizes the complex history of the music industry.
The team won the award for "Comprehensive Treatment of Time" at the IEEE VAST Challenge, a premier annual competition in the field of visual analytics. Their project, titled Melody Way, is an interactive system that allows users to explore how artists, genres and collaborations evolve over decades.
Zong guided the team as they applied advanced skills in data visualization, front-end engineering and interactive design.
The VAST Challenge provides teams with a complex, often fictional dataset and tasks them with creating visual analytic tools to solve a mystery or reveal patterns. For this challenge, the students had to map the intricate connections within a massive database of musical works.
Melody Way distinguishes itself through its intuitive interface. The platform features a "galaxy of artists" at the top of the screen, where an artist's position relative to the center indicates their influence and productivity. Beneath this galaxy, a timeline maps musical works and record label activities across decades.
Melody Way was awarded for its ability to track long-term trends. Users can click on specific artists to trace their career trajectories from their first appearance in the industry to their final work. The system also maps the flow of influence, showing which genres inspired an artist and how that artist subsequently shaped future styles.
In their video demonstration, the team showcased how the tool could track the rise of a specific genre, identifying peaks and valleys in its popularity and visualizing how it branched into sub-genres over time.
In Web Programming and Design curriculum, students move beyond simple coding to create a storytelling engine powered by data. They are able to turn raw information into clear, navigable narratives.
Additional information
