6% error on that pie chart. Pretty proud of myself ;)
Visualizing data is an art
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#22I've grown out of being impressed by flashy and difficult to understand data visualizations. I'm much more impressed by novel insight, clearly presented, in familiar ways.
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Re: Visualizing data is an art
#23I've grown out of being impressed by flashy and difficult to understand data visualizations. I'm much more impressed by novel insight, clearly presented, in familiar ways.
I think the article addresses your point: "The fact that some disciplines of an art form demand more precision doesn't mean the whole field shares those demands. It would be like saying best practices for photorealism should be applied to abstract expressionism, or how we approach technical writing should be the same as how we approach poetry."
It wouldn't make sense to say "I've grown out of being impressed by complex prose" - you're welcome to enjoy Faulker or not, but he simply didn't have the same goals as the authors of the Stripe documentation, and judging both pieces of writing by the same standard is basically pointless (except, perhaps, as an art project of its own).
I'd even apply this to coding itself. Day to day, I think everybody around me should be writing Blub, grug-brain code, but I'm happy there are people trying creative, weird languages and mind-bending ideas elsewhere and I'm curious what they find out.
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#2499% of the time it is design, 1% it is art. The goal is always to convey information in a digestible way without being misleading. An example of it being art is that video that illustrates death counts in WWII.
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics should be a required for reading for anyone working with numbers.
tldr: only use color when necessary, avoid bold typefaces, keep scales consistent across charts unless there is a specific need to do otherwise.
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#25I've grown out of being impressed by flashy and difficult to understand data visualizations. I'm much more impressed by novel insight, clearly presented, in familiar ways.
I think publications practicing actual journalism like The Upshot and ProPublica do an incredible job of this. The focus is always clear presentation and accessibility above all else but its undeniable that so much of their work is also just gorgeous
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#26I just wrote a book (released yesterday!), Effective Visualization, that takes almost the opposite approach. Follow well-known patterns and know your audience. That should guide you to telling a good story.
It can look pretty, but making it art for the sake of art probably won't resonate with your audience.
That's been my experience after I've trained and consulted with some of the biggest companies in the world.
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#276% error on that pie chart. Pretty proud of myself ;)
2% goml
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#28I just wrote a book (released yesterday!), Effective Visualization, that takes almost the opposite approach. Follow well-known patterns and know your audience. That should guide you to telling a good story. It can look pretty, but making it art for the sake of art probably won't resonate with your audience. That's been my experience after I've trained and consulted with some of the biggest companies in the world. htt…
Congratulations on the book drop!
So I'm not sure if you read my piece or just wanted to drop a promotion, but I think you're misrepresenting my view here. I'm not advocating for "art for the sake of art" and I certainly don't think you should not know your audience.
My main point is that I don't think all of data viz is as simple as you're implying here, i.e. that a pretty chart probably won't "resonate" or that a chart from the Tufte school of thought automatically will.
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#29It’s so easy to measure how fast and accurate users are at completing real tasks in your domain using various viz. I’d be disappointed if the conversation was purely between rigid principles and artistry.
Re: Visualizing data is an art
#30I don’t love the “me against the world” framing, but maybe I’ve just been blessed with good teachers — this is a great summation of what the HCI faculty at GaTech espouse! If it’s not a consensus yet, it should be. If the author pops by, I’ve just gotta say: you’re killin it with the cute illustrations, especially the dials one. Very inspiring stuff! Thanks for sharing, OP. EDIT: if I had to pick out any one idea for…
Thank you! Yeah, I hear you on the framing. I don't have a formal education on data viz myself (I guess not many people do?), but I've gotten into the world over the last few years. A lot of the literature I've seen has come across as dogmatic to me, which is what sparked this article. That's great to hear that your experience is more aligned with this way of thinking. And thanks for the nice words about the animatio…
To be fair, you're writing a blog, not a textbook - despite my complaint I'd probably do a bit of the same for the sake of engagement!
Looking forward to seeing your posts in the future. Wish you could follow people on HN!