We watched Home the other weekend (available on YouTube); a sort of Inconvenient-Truth-meets-BBC-documentary film about the story of the Earth. The scariest chapter of course being humans’ appearance and the destruction of the environment.
The issues of global warming aside, it was interesting to note the different approach that this film took to Inconvenient, especially how numbers were communicated.
Although we almost-unanimously praise the combination of infographics, photography, and commentary by Al Gore, I find Home equally, if not more, compelling to watch – yes, even without infographics!!
Why? Because:
- there’s a narrative; not just any narrative, but one which every person watching the film is a part of.
- seeing the actual impact of humans rather than a removed/abstract/conceptual line graph or chart is far more relatable
- being guided, having a stream of video plus voice-over lends more to the imagination. There’s something inherently different about watching a presentation versus a film.
There’s a very good paper out there by Dalbello & Spoerri (2005) Statistical representations from popular texts for the ordinary citizen, 1889–1914 which argues that representational visuals can aid communication to audiences through their strong relationship with everyday life.
I wonder all of this after realising that people need shitloads of explanation when you show them a datavis project or an infographic.
If everyone in the field argues that visual metaphor, abstract form that follows our perception, Gestalt theory, and understanding of user models of interaction can produce visualisations that are easy to use, familiar… then why is it so hard?!
People have to be ‘trained’ to use computer systems, but they shouldn’t have to for information aesthetic datavis. Instead, datavis must take qualities of well-designed products (a la words from Don Norman) and perhaps even the intuitiveness of art.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W5R-4JB9MVG-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1126434131&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=cdccb77069ee9e59e016d747d8cdce93
del.icio.us
Datavis: Making Way for Representative over Abstract Representations
We watched Home the other weekend (available on YouTube); a sort of Inconvenient-Truth-meets-BBC-documentary film about the story of the Earth. The scariest chapter of course being humans’ appearance and the destruction of the environment.
The issues of global warming aside, it was interesting to note the different approach that this film took to Inconvenient, especially how numbers were communicated.
Although we almost-unanimously praise the combination of infographics, photography, and commentary by Al Gore, I find Home equally, if not more, compelling to watch – yes, even without infographics!!
Why? Because:
There’s a very good paper out there by Dalbello & Spoerri (2005) Statistical representations from popular texts for the ordinary citizen, 1889–1914 which argues that representational visuals can aid communication to audiences through their strong relationship with everyday life.
I wonder all of this after realising that people need shitloads of explanation when you show them a datavis project or an infographic.
If everyone in the field argues that visual metaphor, abstract form that follows our perception, Gestalt theory, and understanding of user models of interaction can produce visualisations that are easy to use, familiar… then why is it so hard?!
People have to be ‘trained’ to use computer systems, but they shouldn’t have to for information aesthetic datavis. Instead, datavis must take qualities of well-designed products (a la words from Don Norman) and perhaps even the intuitiveness of art.