Distributed Cognition for InfoVis Theory

by Robert Kosara, 2008-10-19, 2 comments

VisWeek 2008

Criticism of the sad state of theory in InfoVis. Yes! Zhicheng Liu presented work he has done with Nancy Nersessian, John Stasko. His take on internal and external knowledge and the way they can be applied in InfoVis is a great basis for further work. He also quoted from our paper (yes, another link to our stuff, but what can I do?). Stasko and his students have been doing some excellent foundational work in the last years, it's great to see that.

Comments

I just finished reading the

Submitted by Hadley Wickham on Fri, 2008-10-24 09:00.

I just finished reading the paper and I found it wanting. I understand that theories of mind should impact how we develop our visualisations, but after reading that paper I don't have any more idea about how the brain works than before hand, and nor was there any concrete advice.

re:

Submitted by Leslie on Sat, 2008-11-01 05:08.

I liked the paper a lot as well. I think one of the high order bits is that DCog is not (yet) a theory, but a framework, and whereas DCog does not tell you "how the brain works" and does not give you "concrete advice", that does not threaten its validity as a theoretical framework which can be brought to bear on InfoVis.