For 2021’s Indianapolis 500, title sponsor NTT wanted to show off the power of their Smart Platform by using the thousands of streams of data coming off the car and track instrumentation to provide altogether new insights into the strategy of Indycar racing. These data visualizations needed to work for the 300,000 fans in attendance, on the colossal LEDs on the ‘Pagoda’ in the center of the track, on the LCDs distributed throughout the stadium, and on the TVs, computers, and mobile phones tuned into the Indycar YouTube channel during the race.
Prior efforts had focused on what we call ‘marching ants’ visualizations of the progress of the cars on the track, an approach that provides little to no additional context and really serves only to strip the excitement out of the race.
We saw an opportunity to help veterans and new fans alike understand the big picture strategy that informs decision-making on the track.
As always, our approach began with interviewing subject matter experts and stakeholders. We had conversations across the Indycar and NTT teams to build intuition and broaden our own understanding. With insights gathered from that research and from a deep, deep, deep dive into the texture of captured data from past races, we looked for new ways to tell the stories in the numbers.
The resulting discoveries and the visualizations they produced succeeded wildly, with even Indycar executives expressing surprise at how previously-nonexistent metrics added new context to the metagame they run.
_______________________________ INDY 500
Design and Code: Hard Work Party
Creative Agency: Mighty&True
Client: NTT
Photos Courtesy of: Hal Lovemelt / Mighty&True
Some screen caps pictured here were made in testing with prior race data and placeholder images, so if you’re an Indy fan and something seems amiss, good eye!
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