Kyle’s hero Ben Fry has come up with another interesting and useful visualization: type in digits of a zip code and the map narrows its focus to the area covered by your partial entry.

By doing this, I found out that 99403 (clarkston, wa) is the biggest US zip code; and that 01001 (agawam, ma) is the smallest. This is information difficult or impossible to find through normal means (since it is an uncommon query, I am sure).

The analogy to E@S is the idea of visualization for progressive input. A student might know they want to see a sporting event, but not know which one until presented with all the options that meet that criteria. Currently they can browse categories on the website, but a solution for the screen installations would be different. Just putting it on the table as a possible accessory for the map interface.

Try it out yourself: Ben Fry’s Zip Code Map

via xblog