Or when it really matters.
“Pie charts and scatter plots seem like ordinary tools, but they revolutionized the way we solve problems.”
Hannah Fry ~ The New Yorker
All posts about
Information graphics
UX of data: Making data available doesn’t make it usable
The use, action and value are in the design.
“Data plays an important part in our daily lives. It shapes how we view the world and, for better or worse, informs the decisions we make. Despite controversies around who collects and does what with data, data-centric work is seen as critical to solving the most complex problems of today, from climate change and security to health crises and inequality. It spans many types of tasks in various professions, undertaken by multiple stakeholders, who may or may not share a common understanding of the domain or the task. It also raises questions of data literacy, inclusion, and fairness in ensuring that the value the data creates is shared as widely as possible.”
Laura Koesten and Elena Simper ~ ACM Interactions Magazine XXVIII.2 ★
Information Design for Healthcare
Still a vibrant field for any industry.
“For years, there has been a disparity in the understanding between the medical community and the general population. Despite the fact that every single individual possesses a body, most of us are not aware of how they work and how we can take care of them better. There are many reasons for this — firstly, medical science is incredibly complex and constantly evolving, treatments that were commonplace 10 years ago can be rendered archaic overnight in the face of new physiological discoveries and it can be hard to keep up. Secondly, every human body is different, and with no dearth of medical information readily available on the internet, it has become increasingly harder for an individual to determine what information is relevant to them specifically and what they can ignore. Lastly, it is not the primary responsibility of the medical community to present medical information in an easy-to-understand way to the general population which leaves many complexities untouched, nuances ignored and jargon abound. Instead, this job falls on those of us committed to information design.”
Akansha Kukreja a.k.a. /akansha-kukreja ~ Design Observer ★
Designing effective infographics
The more data, the more a need to visualize and tell a story.
“Information graphics translate data into a visual medium that is easy to understand and engaging. Integrated visuals with text and pictures that strengthen each other are the goal, but hard to achieve.”
Lexie Martin a.k.a. /lexiemmartin | @lexiemmartin ~ Nielsen Norman Group ★
DVP: Collection of data visualizations to get inspired and finding the right type
Great collection, now what.
“Resource, showing 150 different types of datavis/charts, each with examples and type of data represented.”
Hans Rosling: Doctor, Professor, and Presenter Extraordinaire
Eulogy by the master of preso on the master of stats.
“The Zen Master of data visualization has died. I am sorry to have to report that Dr. Hans Rosling passed away today in Uppsala, Sweden. He was just 68. A profoundly mournful day for anyone who knew Professor Rosling, obviously. But it’s also a sad day for all of us in the greater TED community or data visualization/business intelligence communities as well. Dr. Rosling’s work was seen by millions and will continue to be seen by millions worldwide. It is incalculable just how many professionals Hans inspired over the years. His presentations, always delivered with honesty, integrity, and clarity, were aided by clear visuals of both the digital and analog variety. He was a master statistician, physician, and academic, but also a superb presenter and storyteller. (…) Let us all remember Professor’s Rosling’s contributions and continue to keep the dream of a more fact-based, rational worldview alive.”
Garr Reynolds a.k.a. /garr-reynolds | @presentationzen ★
The next era of designers will use data as their medium
We used to call it Information Visualization of InfoGraphics. What’s in a name.
“The software industry today is in need of a new kind of designer: one proficient in the meaning, form, movement, and transformation of data. I believe this Data Designer will turn out to be the most important new creative role of the next five years.”
(Mark Rolston ~ Wired)
Analyzing Minard’s visualization of Napoleon’s 1812 march
Learning about the history of your profession is the best thing you can do.
“There are some similarities to designing print data graphics and modern interfaces for mobile and web. When we need to translate numbers into graphics for users, we need to focus on communicating lots of information without overwhelming the users with extraneous content. Both Playfair and Minard created effective graphics to turn numbers into a narrative, but Minard was able to tell a much more detailed story with his design techniques.”
(Joanne Cheng a.k.a. @joannecheng ~ thoughtbot)
Organizing the world: How hypermedia looked in 1934
So pleased with this information graphics from Paula and her team.
“Sharing the dream of Paul Otlet about Mundaneum – a kind of hypermedia system that allowed the management and sharing of all human knowledge in the 30’s. (…) Systems, principles and machines created by Otlet and La Fontaine to organize the huge documents and index cards in the RBU. The creation of a highly flexible language management system for databases: The Universal Decimal Classification (UCD), the first modern faceted classification system, in opposition of Melvil Dewey’s Decimal Classification.”
(Paula Azevedo Macedo a.k.a. @paulamacedo, Seth Pérez, and Larissa Braga)
Fritz Kahn: The little-known godfather of infographics
Every current field has its longtime history. You should only look for connections, inspiration and influences.
“Around the time when Austrian sociologist, philosopher, and curator Otto Neurath was building his ISOTYPE visual language, which laid the foundation for pictogram-based infographics, another infographic pioneer was doing something even more ambitious: The German polymath Fritz Kahn – amateur astronomer, medical scientist by training, gynecologist by early occupation, artist by inclination, writer, educator and humanist by calling – was developing innovative visual metaphors for understanding science and the human body, seeking to strip scientific ideas of their alienating complexity and engage a popular audience with those essential tenets of how life works.”
How to be an educated consumer of info graphics: David Byrne on the art-science of visual storytelling
A couple of my universa coming together.
“(…) at the heart of the aspiration to cultivate a kind of visual literacy so critical for modern communication. Here are a few favorite pieces from the book that embody that ideal of intelligent elegance and beautiful revelation of truth.”
(Maria Popova a.k.a. @brainpicker ~ Brain Pickings)
The language of dynamic and interactive graphics
A way to make meaning out of big data, content and information.
“This blog post explores if and how the framework for the analysis of static graphics offered by Yuri Engelhardt in his PhD thesis, The language of graphics: A framework for the analysis of syntax and meaning in maps, charts and diagrams (2002), might be usefully extended to become applicable to dynamic and interactive graphics as well. This brief exploration will center on a discussion of one example of a dynamic graphic: Gapminder World.”
Information architecture schools of thought (beta)
Great infographics for better understanding the history of IA.
“The research captured unique IA practice definitions and related concepts that have given shape to the industry. Works are cited because they have persisted and are actively endorsed, practiced or developed as an area of research and theoretical inquiry.”
(Nathaniel Davis a.k.a. @iatheory ~ DSIA)
What does a user-centered design process look like?
Reading the high-level phases, thought it was rather circular, iterative and incremental than linear.”
“What really differentiates user-centered design from a more traditional waterfall model of software design is the user feedback loop, which informs each phase of the project. This feedback loop is established through the use of a range of techniques that have become the staple for UX Designers. There are a ton of them, and knowing when to use which techniques during which phase of a project comes with experience. Personally, I find experimenting with new techniques and tweaking old favorites is part of the fun of being a UX Designer.”
(Matthew Magain a.k.a. @mattymcg ~ UX mastery)
The intricate anatomy of UX design
Don’t get confused. It’s just a DTDT effort in Venn diagrams.
“This mega graphic attempts to tackle the relationship between UX and all other aspects of design.”
All dashboards should be feeds
What you also can do with Big Data and Feeds. Creating meaning out of information.
“So, a big but sincere request to everybody who’s making analytics or stats apps, either standalone or as part of a larger app: Please throw away the dashboard. I know they demo well and look great in investor pitch decks or screencast videos. But they don’t actually help me make decisions, or get better at what I’m doing. And that’s the only reason I’m measuring something in the first place.”
Visualizing Data: Seeing is Believing
How perception of information drives our concepts and the way we think, understand and come up with ideas.
“As humans, our ability to observe and analyse the contents of the world around us is both unique and astonishing, but so too is our capacity to form verbal and visual concepts. These seem to be the principal factors which have worked to our adaptive advantage in competition with other animal species. We are, in one respect at least, superior to other animals because we have developed a greater variety of systems of communication and expression, and one of these is art.”
The power of complexity in visual communication
It’s all about language: morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
“Many types of information have their own vocabulary along with conventions for visual communication.”
The Diagram of Information Visualization
Even business graphics is on the horizon. And that’s not clipart in PPTs.
“In the last ten years, the area of Information Visualization has witnessed an exponential increase in its popularity. Diagrammatic reasoning and visual epistemology are becoming readily accepted methods of research in many academic domains. Concurrently, information graphics and Infovis have grabbed the attention of a larger mainstream audience.”
(Parsons Journal for Information Mapping Volume IV, Issue 4)
The Age of User Experience Design: Infographic
The numbers – if true – are amazing.
“The growth of the User Experience Design field is breathtaking, but well deserved. Thanks to UX Designers all over the world, the quality of products has increased dramatically. Design really does matter now. It’s a user centric world in which there’s not only Apple on the scene anymore.”
(Martin Treder a.k.a. @marcintreder ~ UXPin)
