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Thinking Visualization / Designing for Knowledge

Empowering for creative and effective data visualization

UZH, Zurich, Nov. 2022

Benjamin Bach

University of Edinburgh

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Designing for overview?

Designing for explanation?

Designing for (re)use

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Designing for overview?

Designing for explanation?

Designing for (re)use

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The tip of the iceberg. a birds-eye-view. a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that the information can be monitored at a glance. a dashboard seeks to act as a translator, not simply a mirror, setting the forms and parameters for how data are communicated and thus what the user can see and engage with.

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The tip of the iceberg. a birds-eye-view. a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that the information can be monitored at a glance. a dashboard seeks to act as a translator, not simply a mirror, setting the forms and parameters for how data are communicated and thus what the user can see and engage with. Don’t overwhelm viewers. Avoid visual clutter. Avoid poor visual design. Carefully chose KPIs. Align with existing workflows. Don’t add too much data. Provide for consistency. Provide for interaction affordances. Manage complexity. Organize charts symmetrically. Group charts by attribute. Order charts by time. Balance data + space. Increase information. Avoid redundancy of information. Show information, rather than data. Design is an iterative process. Context is very important. State your meta-data. Use color carefully. Understand your audience.

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Khan, S., Nguyen, P. H., Abdul-Rahman, A., Bach, B., Chen, M., Freeman, E., & Turkay, C. (2021). Propagating visual designs to numerous plots and dashboards. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 28(1), 86-95.

Dykes, J., Abdul-Rahman, A., Archambault, D., Bach, B., Borgo, R., Chen, M., Enright, J., Fang, H., Firat, E.E., Freeman, E. and Gönen, T., 2022. Visualization for epidemiological modelling: challenges, solutions, reflections and recommendations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 380(2233), p.20210299.

How to visualize?

How to use screenspace?

How to structure information?

https://dashboarddesignpatterns.github.io

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Designing for overview?

Designing for explanation?

Designing for (re)use

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Panel (sequences)

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Panel (sequences)

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(c) Benjamin Bach, in Bach, B., Kerracher, N., Hall, K. W., Carpendale, S., Kennedy, J., & Henry Riche, N. (2016, May). Telling stories about dynamic networks with graph comics. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3670-3682). ACM.

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(c) Terri Po

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(c) Heidi Tammi

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Explaining data analysis

https://statscomics.github.io

Wang, Z., Ritchie, J., Zhou, J., Chevalier, F. and Bach, B., 2020. Data Comics for Reporting Controlled User Studies in Human-Computer Interaction. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 27(2), pp.967-977.

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Explaining data analysis

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Explaining data analysis

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Explaining data analysis

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Explaining

data analysis

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Explaining data analysis

https://statscomics.github.io

Wang, Z., Ritchie, J., Zhou, J., Chevalier, F. and Bach, B., 2020. Data Comics for Reporting Controlled User Studies in Human-Computer Interaction. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 27(2), pp.967-977.

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Find support....

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Visualization Cheat Sheets

Wang, Z., Sundin, L., Murray-Rust, D. and Bach, B., 2020, April. Cheat Sheets for Data Visualization Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

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Visualization Cheat Sheets

Wang, Z., Sundin, L., Murray-Rust, D. and Bach, B., 2020, April. Cheat Sheets for Data Visualization Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

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Visualization Cheat Sheets

Wang, Z., Sundin, L., Murray-Rust, D. and Bach, B., 2020, April. Cheat Sheets for Data Visualization Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

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Visualization Cheat Sheets

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Visualization Cheat Sheets

https://visualizationcheatsheets.github.io

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Wang, Z., Wang, S., Farinella, M., Murray-Rust, D., Henry Riche, N., & Bach, B. (2019, May). Comparing effectiveness and engagement of data comics and infographics. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12).

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Effectiveness of data comics

Pros:

Visual overview

Guide readers

Adapt to reader pace

Space == narration

Memorable layout == narration

Can be shared easily

Cons:

Small images

Repetition -> highlight changes

Require space

Non-interactive

(Might be) hard to craft

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https://interactivedatacomics.github.io/

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Designing for overview?

Designing for explanation?

Designing for (re)use

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http://vistools.net

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