Let’s look at the “Airline Route Maps” (the ones that are in the back of an airline magazine) as a way to explore the importance of task and how understanding task and data can lead to novel designs. It will show us a different way to think about node link diagrams more generally.

Core lesson: think about what a visualization makes easy to see. Different representations make some things easier, and harder. And some issues with dealing with geographic data in the US.

This comes from a New York Times story from August, 2024 The Geography of Unequal Recovery. Curiously, this page doesn’t show up well in my web browser, the images are from the mobile app (on an iPad).

Here is the “headline” (what appeared in the app “front page” that intrigued me):

This is a lesson on Axis Truncation for Line Graphs. It was inspired by a graph in the New York Times.

Don’t make the wrong thing easy to see. Here’s a real example from my own work where a seemingly innocent line graph was misleading, and needed some serious redesign.

Line charts can be used (with caution) even when the X axis is neither interval or continuous.

In this snack, we look at “value over time” graphs in two different iPhone apps. It’s a good opportunity to connect design and task with a comparative critique.

I believe that critique is a valuable skill for both practicing and learning Visualization (see Tutorial 4: Critique). The book Discussing Design is a great resource to learn it.

Critique is the practice of examining something carefully to understand it and learn, often in a “discussion” format. Critique is a key tool in learning about Vis, and in improving design (for Vis, and in general). It is also a generally useful skill that can be learned with practice.

If you need to pick a book to get started, I recommend Alberto Cairo’s the The Truthful Art.

A surprising amount of visualization design and analysis can be wrapped up in the single question “What does this visualization make easy to see?”

This is the closest thing to a “primary textbook” for my class. The course shares a similar philosophy to the book, and we’ll read almost all of the chapters. The UW library has electronic copies, so students do not need to buy it.

Alberto Cairo is a designer and journalist who has become a visualization educator. He has written some excellent books on visualization. I use excerpts from his books “The Functional Art” and “The Truthful Art” in my class.

Jacques Bertin was a French cartographer who had lots of ideas about visualization, before there was a field of visualization. Many of the ideas we use in visualization today can be seen in his work, although reading these “original sources” can be challenging.

This is a thin little book (I know several people who read it in one sitting) that discusses the psychology of visual perception and its relationship to visualization and design. It’s not very deep, but it’s a great place to get started in appreciating how understanding how we see can help us be better designers.

Edward Tufte’s books are probably the most famous (or infamous) books on visualization. They are more art history books, full of historical examples and commentary, than books to help you understand or design visualizations. However, they are very influential, and everyone in the field (and many people outside of the field) talks about them. We look at parts of them for class.