Information Visualization and Art

For those who love Hans Rosling’s TED videos, here’s a new PDF called “Information Visualization and Art” by Stephen Few, who’s written a few good books on visualization.

Now, the obvious objection to this piece is art for its own sake, and that’s a valid point. But if the goal is to both look pretty AND communicate something new, more care should be taken.

The PDF looks at Ben Fry’s fun “visualization” of US health care costs (mentioned on page 2). If you get bored, scroll to pages 8-10 to see Few’s ultimate result after such experimentation in Tableau (great, but pricey, software, even for students–and Windows only). Note that Mr. Few isn’t a designer, so the Tableau output reminds me of what Google might make rather than Apple, say.

Further design time could make the display more inviting to newcomers, assisting people with understanding the data, and presenting highlights and explanations. Care would need to be taken to not disrupt the actual data presented, however.

And ultimately, the “better” version Few presents is much less “fun” and artistic looking. The challenge then is to bring back the fun element too– Making art that conveys meaning is so much more challenging than just using data to draw circles.

Information visualization techniques as demonstrated in this PDF are why I’ve kept my iPhone app simple. I wanted to lose the cruft and focus on displaying what people want to know, as fast as possible. It’s why when I add GPS, I won’t use Google Maps, because that’s road-based and the focus should remain on transit. It’s why when I add offline mode, I won’t use myttc.ca or a cached copy of the data without knowing how to tell people it could be incorrect. It’s why I’ll continue to improve the app by displaying stop times without you needing to click Next, or why I tend to over-think improvements before implementing them 3 different ways.

It also highlights why I tend to fail in my more artistic courses at university– because by pushing so hard to convey meaning, my works then appear to be less artistic, even if to me they are “better designed”. If the best art makes you think, then its meaning could be completely obfuscated, allowing your own impressions of the art to shine through it– but in design, and information design in particular, you have to do the exact opposite: Make things as clear and simple as necessary. Sadly, those who haven’t yet tried to do such don’t realise how damn hard “making things easy to understand without over-simplifying” actually is, especially in web and interactive design fields. After all, our thoughts and ideas are rarely easy to understand. But that’s life.

PS. If you like this, sign up for Few’s newsletter at his site: http://www.perceptualedge.com/