Information Visualization
Information Visualization is a way of representing data in a visual form to make it easily understandable and useful for our daily lives. A great example that is relevant to the current day, is the London Underground Map which originates from a sketch drawn around 1931 by Harry Beck. Harry Beck was an English engineering draftsman working at that time at the London Underground Signals Office. He drew the diagram in his spare time and although he never confirmed where he got the inspiration for his re-design of the Underground Map, it shows significant similarities to an electric circuit diagram. Until that time, the underground lines had been represented in a topographically correct way, often superimposed over an actual city map. But Beck stated, that geographic accuracy was unimportant and that all a passenger needed to know was how to get efficiently from one point to another and where to change lines in-between. To avoid that the center of the map is crowded with stations while the outer stations are spaced apart, he positioned them on his diagram nearly equally spaced. Every underground line is represented with a distinct colored line on the map and they are only going horizontally, vertically or in a 45 degree angle. We are now used to this visualization. Many bigger cities like Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and Sydney have adapted this design for their own public transport maps, but back in 1931, the London Underground Organization was rather skeptical about this radical proposal. In contrast to earlier designs, it was no longer possible to tell the actual distances and the correct geographic location of the stations. However, they decided to give it a try and after the first 500 copies were successfully distributed in 1932, they printed 700’000 more in 1933. Apart from small changes, this is the design you still see today.
Visual Perception
Lets talk about Visual Perception and Cognition in order to get a better understanding of how Information Visualizations work. Visual Perception describes the ability to see, process and interpret one’s environment. It is handled by the visual cortex, which works extremely fast and efficient. At least a third of our brains capacity is devoted to visual processing (touch is only about 8% and hearing no more than 2%). Cognition, in comparison, is much slower. But for almost all the work in traditional data sense-making, conscious thinking is required. So Information Visualization shifts the balance of the two towards greater use of the Visual Perception and takes so advantage of the much faster processing of our eyes. But even if the principles of Visual Perception are the same for everyone, visualizations have often a certain target group in mind and if you do not belong to this group, you may misinterpret the visualization. There is a really simple example for that. One possibility to visually communicate information are emojis. Most of us use them on a daily base and most of the emojis’ meaning are self-explanatory. But there are some, that are designed for a rather specific group of people and that “outsiders” simply can not understand.
I showed the picture on the right to my class, asking them if they knew what this hand sign meant. Unlike usual, my classmates did not hesitate, they were pretty confident about their answers. Rock on, Devil Horns, Black Sabbath and Heavy Metal were just some of the keywords I got as answers and I know where they are coming from. If the picture only showed a hand with raised pinky and index finger (🤘🏻), they would have been correct. But there is this extended thumb nearly no one seems to care about although it is what makes all the difference. With the thumb, it is no longer a gesture from the pop and rock culture but the sign for „I love you“ in American Sign Language.
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Watermarks Project
Chris Bodle decided to show people how their daily environment will be affected by the rising sea level if humanity is not going to do something about climate change. Taking the emotions connected to the place you live into consideration, this is probably an effective method to raise people’s awareness for the consequences of an omnipresent and much discussed topic.
In-Formed
For his In-Formed project, Nadeem Haidary designed a fork with prongs of varying lengths. It is inspired by a traditional bar chart, each prong representing the calorie consumption rate of a different country. No matter how useful a fork with different sized tines may work, to design every day objects can be a great way to make people stop and think in their daily lives.
Tree Drawings
Although Tim Knowles’ Tree Drawings are far from traditional diagrams, charts and statistics, they are visualized information nonetheless. Knowles attaches pens to the end of branches and lets the wind draw.
