In the article, “Principles of Information display for Visualization Practitioners” the author outlines the work on information display by Edward Tufte. It begins by defining the concept of visualizations excellence. According to Dr. Tufte, as the author quotes, visualizations excellence entails the complex ideas, which are communicated with precision, clarity, and efficiency. The author also quotes Dr. Tufte on the things that visualizations should do. Among them include showing the data and making large data sets coherent.
The article also highlights some of the classic information designs along with general principles that Dr. Tufte has researched. Specifically, the article concentrates on classic information designs including micro/macro composition, time series, and small multiples. An example of the guides for workaday designs that the author quotes from Tufte’s work is avoiding content-free decoration. The article also focuses on the data-ink ratio. According to Tufte, as cited by the author, one has to maximize the data-ink ratio, erase non-data-ink, and erase the redundant data-ink so as to have tight visualizations. The article also provides an overview of the concepts of layering and separation clutter, and color.
In the article, “Principles of Data Visualization -What We see in a Visual,” the author, FusionCharts, provides the readers with the information about the processing of the visual information. The reason for visualizing information is to tell a story as the author asserts. The visualizations in business are important in that they communicate more information in a much smaller space compared to the tables (FusionCharts 3).The author further elucidates the two broad goals of visualizations in a business environment, which include explanatory and exploratory. The author also explains and demonstrates how memory and eyesight work in parallel. The author asserts that the two types of memory, which come to play when they process visual information include the long-term memory and working memory. The article concentrates on the working memory, which as the author describes, breaks the whole visual into small chunks of data through the chunking process.
The preattentive attributes are the visual language alphabets, and the analytical patterns are the words created using these alphabets (FusionCharts 9). The author goes on and asserts that the working memory utilizes preattentive attributes including size, enclosure, 2-D position, and intensity, among others to store only the information that is required at the moment. The preattentive attributes help in spotting the patterns in a visual as the author stresses. The examples of analytical patterns include wide and narrow and normal and abnormal, among others. The article also focuses on Gestalt principles including closure, figure and ground, similarity, proximity, symmetry, continuity, connection, and enclosure. The author maintains that these principles describe the way human mind organizes specific elements into groups. The author uses them to prioritize the important patterns.
Works Cited
Al Globus. "Principles of Information display for Visualization Practitioners." The Review of Economic and Business Studies REBS 2 (1994): 161.
FusionCharts. Principles of Data Visualization -What We See in a Visual. White Paper.
