Data pipelines are generally hard to explain and aren’t as interesting to those not directly involved in data analytics.
How to make this more interesting and engaging? Simple. Make it in 3D. Animated. Interactive.
The above is a data pipeline animation for one of my recent projects.
I started out looking into ways, beyond just visio, diagrams or graphviz, that would demonstrate the data flow in a simple and interesting way. Animation was a natural choice, yet the available toolsets had an associated steep learning curve.
I then came across three.js which seemed like an achiveable setup and medium. However, coding all three.js objects by hand felt like an endless task.
After a bit of digging I came across spline.design tool – an awesome 3D and Animation editor, for the web, that leverages three.js and anime.js (do check it out).
Some feedback I got: “This looks cool”, “I like it”, “It’s like watching a domino chain project”.