Welcome to Visualization Snacks!

Visualization Snacks is my attempt to provide Visualization Knowledge in small, easily accessible pieces.

Warning: This is a pre-release version of the site. I am just putting up the shell with a few postings for my class.

Many people want help with Visualization, but don’t have the opportunity to take a class, or do extensive reading, or search through the endless resources. Many of the resources out there only work in the context of a larger chunk.

What I’ve found is the pieces I’ve created for the class I teach (CS765 Course Web) are not necessarily appropriate for anything other than the students in the class. Visualization Snacks is an attempt to put that kind of content into a form that may be more usable to others.

What you’ll find (the sections of the site)…

Snacks - these are the core “lessons” written explicitly for this site. The idea is to have a form that allows for quick consumption. The goal is to provide the main idea quickly, but then provide the background afterwards. The why follows the what.
Tutorials - these are written “documents” that were originally created for my class, or that don’t have the stylized form of the Snacks. They tend to be longer.
Critiques - are examinations of specific visualizations. The idea of a critique is to examine something closely to learn from it (not just to criticize).
Papers - are my summaries/discussions of papers (or other documents). The idea is that I read them, so you don’t have to. In some cases, it’s an opportunity for me to give you the short, informal version of something else I’ve written.
Resources - descriptions of books and other things that might be helpful.

A listing of some of the recent postings…

A quick walkthrough of showing how to get started with Tableau. The data set is one we will use in CS765 Fall 2025: Life expectancy data from around the world. I won’t get as far as making “good” visualizations - but it will give you some hints on how to get started with the data set, and with Tableau.

This is a tutorial on how to get started with Tableau. It is targeted at CS765 students (but should be OK for anyone). I am using the Census dataset I used in my 2024 Class. The tutorial will walk you through what I did to make a few initial pictures. This will show you some of the quirks of Tableau and the dataset.

Airline Route Maps: An interesting Solution to a Node-Link Problem

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.

Unemployment Changes Across The Country

Core lesson: think about what a visualization makes easy to see. Different representations make some things easier, and harder. And be careful when dealing with geographic data in the US: populations and counties are spread unevenly.

College Attendance Line Chart

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

A Robot Performance Graph Mistake

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.

Cairo Discrete Line

Line charts can be used (with caution) even when the X axis is neither interval nor continuous.

Phone App Time Graphs

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.

Discussing Design

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 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?”

Munzner: Visualization Analysis and Design

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.

Cairo: The Truthful Art and The Functional Art

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.

Bertin's Books (Semiology of Graphics)

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.

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