Encodings play a central role in visualization, but I believe our thinking about them is too simplistic. In a new paper, I argue that we need to distinguish between the encodings that specify how a visualization is drawn and the ones that are readable or actually read by an observer. While they largely or entirely overlap in some charts (like bar charts or scatterplots) they don’t in others (pie charts, line charts, etc.). And what exactly do you even specify in more complex visualizations like treemaps?
[Read more…] about Paper: More Than Meets the Eye: A Closer Look at Encodings in Visualizationpaper
Paper: From Jam Session to Recital: Synchronous Communication and Collaboration Around Data in Organizations
Who are the people who use data and visualization as part of their work every day? In particular, how do people use data as part of meetings, to present to others, to discuss their findings and recommendations, etc.? My colleague Matt Brehmer and I ran a pair of studies to find out.
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Paper: Evidence for Area as the Primary Visual Cue in Pie Charts
How we read pie charts is still an open question: is it angle? Is it area? Is it arc length? In a study I’m presenting as a short paper at the IEEE VIS conference in Vancouver next week, I tried to tease the visual cues apart – using modeling and 3D pie charts.
[Read more…] about Paper: Evidence for Area as the Primary Visual Cue in Pie Charts
Two Short Papers on Part-to-Whole Charts at EuroVis
Why do pie charts look the way they do? What makes this particular way of slicing up a circle the preferred way of showing part-to-whole relationships? In two short papers that I’m presenting this week at EuroVis, I looked at the design space of circular part-to-whole charts, including pie charts.
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Paper: Skipping the Replication Crisis in Visualization
Visualization doesn’t have the replication issues that some other fields are struggling with right now, but is that because our science is so strong or because nobody actually bothers with replications? And what can we do to get ahead of potential problems before we run into a full-on crisis? In a paper to be presented at BELIV, Steve Haroz and I list potential pitfalls and present possible solutions.
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Paper: An Argument Structure for Data Stories
There is talk about stories having a beginning, middle, and end, but what does that mean for data stories? How do you create the overall structure for those? In a paper to be presented at EuroVis next week, I discuss a simple but very useful structure that I have found “in the wild,” and that I believe to be useful and generalizable.
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Paper: Readability and Precision in Pictorial Bar Charts
Embellished charts are common in information graphics. But are embellished bar charts actually harder to read than plain ones? In a short paper to be presented at EuroVis next week, Drew Skau and I present a study that looked into this question. [Read more…] about Paper: Readability and Precision in Pictorial Bar Charts
Paper: Finding a Clear Path: Structuring Strategies for Visualization Sequences
How should you sequence information in a data story so it makes the most sense? Are some sequences better than others? Does time have to move forward or does it not matter? In a paper to be published at EuroVis next week, with Jessica Hullman at UW and my Tableau Research colleague Heidi Lam, we report on a pair of studies that looked into this. [Read more…] about Paper: Finding a Clear Path: Structuring Strategies for Visualization Sequences
A Pair of Pie Chart Papers
How do we read pie charts? Do they differ from the even more reviled donut charts? What about common pie chart designs like exploded pies? In two papers to be presented at EuroVis next week, Drew Skau and I show that the common wisdom about how we read these charts (by angle) is almost certainly wrong, and that things are much more complicated than we thought. [Read more…] about A Pair of Pie Chart Papers
Paper: The Connected Scatterplot for Presenting Paired Time Series
I’m very happy to finally be able to announce our paper on the connected scatterplot technique. It describes the technique, provides some historical perspective, and most of all looks into how easy to understand and engaging the technique actually is. [Read more…] about Paper: The Connected Scatterplot for Presenting Paired Time Series