Info Viz by Liz

Elizabeth Murnane
Information Visualization

—  What is information visualization?
—  What are visualizations good for?
—  Design guidelines & techniques
—  HCI Visualization User Goals
—  Responsibilities, considerations, alternate solutions
Today’s Plan

—  What is information visualization?
—  What are visualizations good for?
—  Design guidelines & techniques
—  HCI Visualization User Goals
—  Responsibilities, considerations, alternate solutions
—  Have fun!
◦  Playing with, brainstorming about, and evaluating
visualizations
Today’s Plan

—  Visualization: “The use of computer-‐‑supported,
interactive, visual representations of data to amplify
cognition” (Card et al., 1998)
—  Graphical depiction of understandable information
◦  Transformation of data to information
—  Mental models
—  Creates an “artiﬁcial memory that best supports our
natural means of perception” (Bertin)
Key Concepts

—  Reason about, communicate, document, and
preserve knowledge (Tufte)
—  Quickly understand and assimilate information
—  Gain and share insights
◦  Discovery and decision-‐‑making
◦  Explanation and dissemination
—  Purpose is not the visualizations themselves
Why do we use visualizations?

—  Analyzing information
◦  Discover paZerns and explore trends
◦  Determine underlying factors and notice relationships
◦  Reason, plan, problem-‐‑solve
—  Communicating information
◦  Present, explain, illustrate
◦  Point out key aspects & minimize less relevant details
◦  Education
Viz Types: Viewing vs. Creating

An interactive meta-viz of Viz
Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler, Towards A Periodic
Table of Visualization Methods for Management, 2007.
Interactive version at: www.visual-‐‑literacy.org

—  Handle the expanding volume and diversity of data
—  Summarize, organize, and incorporate multiple
layers of information into single illustration
—  An aesthetic and appealing format makes
comprehension process more enjoyable
Power of Visualization

Napoleon’s March – Minard,1861

—  Illustrates multiple facets of the data (i.e.,
geography, time, temperature, army size, direction
of movement)
—  Also serves as a record of the data
Napoleon’s March – Minard,1861

—  Norman: “The power of the unaided mind is highly
overrated”
—  Visualizations aid thinking
◦  Increase human perceptual processing and aZention
◦  Expand our working memory
◦  Reduce the search for information
◦  Enhance our ability to recognize paZerns
◦  Help us notice irregularities and anomalies
Amplifying Human Cognition

—  Multiply 66 x 43 in your head
Multiplication

—  Multiply 66 x 43 on paper
Multiplication

—  Multiply 66 x 43 on paper
—  People perform 5 times faster with the visual aid
Multiplication

v HCI+Viz: Orient visualizations around users and tasks,
not visualizations themselves
v Schneiderman / Carr
—  Overview
—  Zoom
—  Filter
—  Details-‐‑on-‐‑demand
—  Relate
—  History
—  Extract
Fulfilling User Tasks

v  Metaphors
v  Tufte’s Rules
v  Gestalt theories of form and conﬁguration
v  CRAP: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity

—  Utilize multi-‐‑functioning graphical elements
◦  intuitive cues that convey information
◦  meaning through shape, size, location, color, orientation, motion
—  Use small multiples
◦  repetition, similarity, invite comparison
—  Show process and causality
—  Separate and layer
◦  stratify, order, relate
—  Use color eﬀectively
◦  highlight, distinguish, show selection
—  Avoid extraneous “junk” components that add cluZer and confusion
◦  information overload, disruptive with no purpose, “above all, do no harm”
Some Principles for Viz Design

Infographic Advertising from Honda

—  Informative / Aesthetic
—  Dynamic / Static
—  Interactivity
—  Appropriateness given data, domain, application
—  Alternative sensory inputs
—  Social visualization & transparency, ambiguity,
behavior
Considerations and Choices

—  Schneiderman: "ʺStatistics alone are dangerous and they
hide a lot”
◦  Viz can help reveal problems otherwise hard to detect
—  Heer: Important we also uncover, assess, and verify a
visualization’s credibility
◦  Provide interactivity and feedback
—  Tufte: “Graphical integrity”
—  Lie Factor & exaggeration
—  Careful of size, area, volume, perspective, baseline, context
—  Distortion ever useful?

Truth in Visualization

Misleading Graphics
Stock Market Crash?!

—  Values and goals
—  Good, bad, interesting, eﬀective, informative, overly
complicated, visually appealing?
—  Appropriate graphical representation for the data?
—  Who are the users?
—  Accessibility
—  Methods of evaluation
—  Testing designs with people
Evaluating Visualizations

US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud

Oakland Crimespotting
hZp://oakland.crimespoZing.org/

—  hZp://visual.ly/
◦  Info graphics & data viz centered community
◦  Search and explore visualizations for information and inspiration, set up a portfolio
of your own work to share, and follow and connect with other designers
◦  Oﬀers blog with posts about trends, tools, tips, opportunities, and stories
—  hZp://www.visualizing.org/
◦  View a gallery of visualizations or upload and showcase your own
◦  Enter challenges to create visualizations from a given dataset. New challenges open
up all the time: hZp://www.visualizing.org/contests/visualize-‐‑us-‐‑election
—  hZp://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
◦  Google'ʹs visualization engine that oﬀers an online tool to interactively explore and
visualize data.
◦  Use public datasets from around the world or upload your own data
—  hZp://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
—  hZp://www.coolinfographics.com/
—  hZp://infosthetics.com/
Additional Resources

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