Readings Assignment Comments

Notes on Readings:

Reading #1:

-Infographics: Charts maps, or diagrams that aid comprehension of a given text-based content. 

-Dr. John Snow used infographics to pinpoint location and cause of a cholera epidemic in London. 

-The periodic table is an infographic chart. 

-We see things by what objects represent, and we group those representations into categories and relationships among these categories.  

-Infographics combine images, words, and numbers to operate in a hybrid system of verbal and visual elements and therefore offer the greatest opportunity to increase effectiveness of communication. 

Three major challenges:

1. To clearly understand what type of information is trying to communicate

2. To conceive a suitable representation for that information as cohesive whole- a whole that is more than the sum of its constituent parts such as, charts, diagrams, maps, timelines etc.

3. To choose an appropriate medium for presentation

Information type: spatial, chronological, or quantitative

Infographic device: diagram, map or chart

Communication method: static, motion, or interactive

9 Strategies:

1. Organize

2. Make Visible

3. Establish Context

4. Simplify

5. Add Redundancy

6. Show Cause and Effect

7. Compare and Contrast

8. Create Multiple Dimensions

9. Integrate

Visualizing Information for Advocacy:

Information design uses pictures, symbols, colors, and words to communicate ideas, illustrate information, or express relationships visually.  

-Information design brings form and structure to information

-design for your audience, not for you

Reading #2:

Datasphere: Using the circle as the first, perfect shape, impossible to achieve by human hand, it derives the tension between what is achieved and what could be achieved

Datanets: Revealing the structure of meaning, the network of data points shows cause, context, or collaboration

Datascape: Switching between topography and topology, the spatial arrangement of data at once imposes flow, direction, context, and order.  

Datalogy: providing with weight, space, texture and sensual experiences communicating through the entire bandwidth of human perception. 

Datanoid: giving the data real personality and relevance to live up the fascination of one's own reflection, thus regulating various degrees of abstraction.

Datablocks: Implying certainty and substance of quadrangular destiny by defining borders, clear order, and straight-forward comparability of data. 

* We live in a world what every idea has been thought of before

"The visual form we adopt becomes driven by the tool or topic we are presenting, rather than the usefulness of the data or the insight it gives us"

-Data flow examines the various visual metaphors used in design to capture data in an accessible way.

-Communicating information in a visual form other than data such as in a picture, it opens up a completely new realm of understanding of the information, it enriches the viewers understanding, and this is the importance of infographics.  

"it is the designer who makes this connection possible, by turning his or her inspiration into a form that opens up new meaning"

"simpolexity- there is a complementary relationship between simplicity and complexity that influences design choices to produce surprising and informative data diagrams."

Datashere:

-sphere can take on a representational quality, the completeness of circles are often used to represent individual human beings.

-the well-being of something can be represented by size and shape of sphere

-position from center can mean something, clusters, arcs, radii, all can be used from the circle to represent something. 

Datanet: When individual data points develop tension and connection with each other, the resulting structure becomes an entity in its own right- the network. It draws life essentially from connection and connectedness and it is these qualities that are directed explicitly by the designer to show cause, context, or collaboration.

-"forces within the network dominate and shape content"

- can be ethereal rather than overt, a function of gaps between units rather than units themselves.

Datascape: suggest the potency and responsibility of the designer in guiding the viewer trough a complex sea of meaning, creating a journey of context and interaction, perspective is blended with graphic frameworks to bring depth and meaning to the expression of data. 

-spatial arrangement of data imposes flow, direction, context and order.

-"scale is read as spatial reasoning" 

Datanoid: "we seek out responses from the reflection of ourselves as well as the fonds of unity and distinction in the images of others as learning is driven primarily by emotional relevance"

-we normally decide if something is emotionally relevant before we engage and invest processing power

-hand drawn diagrams communicate with greater potency than perfect pie charts

-by making audience part of the message, the message connects at a deeper level.  

Datalogy:"designers can access the entire bandwidth of human perception by investing data with weight, space, and texture, in doing so, the provide sensual experiences of communication, deliciously revealing the richness of complex data sets, so full of meaning and potential interpretations.  This is the physical interface of analogy, well suited to the continuous and graduated sensations we derive from our immediate environment."

-"the data define the shape of the graph, the designer cannot arbitrarily decide to change its shape, as doing so would change the content and meaning.

Datablocks: -rectangular density are staples of business presentation- they are clear but boring and certain

-blocks become basis of non-linear comparison

Review of Readings:

These readings have made this next project a lot more clear to me. ( I only wish I read them sooner, before looking for data!) I never realized how versatile and creative graphs and diagrams can be.  There are so many different ways to display information and statistics depending on the topic and the point the designer is trying to get across with the data presented.  I really like the datanoid section and the interview with Jessica Hagy; her graphs and diagrams are hilarious and simple.  These readings have made me question my current topic I have been researching, because I feel that I need to find better or more concrete data.  It is really interesting (and kind of exciting!) the many, many ways I can choose to display my data. It was also interesting seeing that a designer made pie charts and other charts like this that I think of as being a simple thing used in the business world and in math.  It is so interesting, as Hagy pointed out, that people and profession use data and are designing different ideas, but just designing them in different ways.