We met with the team at Traceable a number of times, and they helped us better understand the data they were trying to visualize. What they were struggling with as a team was how to visualize various types of complex data. Our team was brought in as an outside influence that could help their developers conceive of different ways to organize and explore complex maps, node pathways, and time-based visualizations.

These were sankey diagrams that Traceable was hoping to flesh out the user interactions for exploring the various pathways within pathways and identifying particular details that exist within these datasets and how they connect to disparate points.

The concept of a map was easier to work with, but even here we had added complexity of time-based data visualization in addition to interactive region targeting and locking, and filtering of various data. 

Working on this kind of project through an agency is always an interesting experience. You learn about what they're trying to achieve, see what kind of data they're working with, and have relative freedom over how to visualize it. The true challenge is accepting that you are a detached creative team, and recognizing the work you are creating is closer to concept than reality.

Would this ever see the light of day? Probably not. Are we designing something that will make the dev team rip their hair out? Likely. Either way, it was a great experience trying to wrangle with so much complexity and beyond technical feasibility, I feel that designers are uniquely prepared to push the boundaries of what a development team may not have imagined themselves.