In 2013, Cooper Hewitt acquired the iPad music application Planetary, developed by Bloom Studio Inc., along with the underlying source code. The code was freely released to enable developers to build upon and incorporate it into other software design. Planetary represents an important branch of interactive data visualization, which was a first in the consumer marketplace. The software forms a relationship between the visualization of the data and the formal properties of the solar system.

Here interaction designer Ben Cerveny talks about the Planetary app (0:01), the early days of iPad (2:10), understanding big data (2:57), possibilities for re-purposing Plantetary (3:49), and the future of interaction design (4:33).