The end of the year is always a good time to look back at the great work done in the world of news graphics – and this year in particular, to relive all the heartbreak and disillusionment. Here is a list of year-end news graphics round-ups for your enjoyment and edification. [Read more...] about A Roundup of Year-End News Graphics Roundups
Blog 2016
The Dumbest User Interface of 2016
It is my great honor and pleasure to announce the winner of the Worst User Interface Award 2016: it goes to the new chip-enabled credit card terminals introduced in the U.S. this year. My congratulations, as it is very well deserved. [Read more...] about The Dumbest User Interface of 2016
When Rankings Are Just Data Porn
Rankings are a common way of talking about data: who made the most money, who won the most medals, etc. But they hide issues in the underlying data. Is the difference between first and second meaningful or just noise? Here is a data video that nicely demonstrates the problem. [Read more...] about When Rankings Are Just Data Porn
The EagerEyes Holiday Shopping Guide
Are you looking for the perfect gift for the data or visualization geek in your life? Did that crazy self-driving water bottle Kickstarter still not deliver, leaving you hunting for an overpriced Nintendo Classic? The EagerEyes Holiday Shopping Guide has all the geeky, uncool gifts you could possibly want. [Read more...] about The EagerEyes Holiday Shopping Guide
The Problem with Vis Taxonomies
Most taxonomies in visualization and HCI are useless. They carve up the space, but they don’t provide new insights or make predictions. Designing a useful taxonomy is a difficult problem, but that's no excuse for publishing lots of mediocre ones. [Read more...] about The Problem with Vis Taxonomies
RJ Andrews’ Profiling the Parks
RJ Andrews has created a great little video about the National Parks in the U.S. Have you ever thought about how the different parks compare? Which one is wider, which one is deeper, which one's at higher or lower elevation?
Graphic Continuum Flash Cards
Jon Schwabish and Severino Ribecca have turned their Graphic Continuum poster into a set of cards. They're a good way to expand your visual vocabulary and find new ideas for how to represent your data. [Read more...] about Graphic Continuum Flash Cards
Ten Great Talks at Information+ 2016
The Information+ Conference took place in Vancouver earlier this year. It brought together people from information visualization and information design (and design more in general). All of the talk videos are online on the website, but since there were a lot and it's kind of hard to decide where to start watching, I'm listing my favorites below. [Read more...] about Ten Great Talks at Information+ 2016
All Those Misleading Election Maps
Would you make a bar chart where the length of the bar doesn't actually scale with the number being shown? Would you draw a line chart with the lines all over the place, not where the values actually are? Of course not. Yet somehow, every single election map works like that. [Read more...] about All Those Misleading Election Maps
VIS 2016 – Thursday, Friday: Empirical Methods, Better Presentations
A panel on empirical methods, papers on time series, and perhaps the best capstone at VIS ever rounded out the conference on Thursday and Friday. [Read more...] about VIS 2016 – Thursday, Friday: Empirical Methods, Better Presentations