(readings due Monday, February 20)
Perception is a huge topic, even the aspects that are directly relevant to visualization are vast. The goal here is to have you read enough of the Vis related things to provide a foundation for things to come.
There are two primary readings:
- Chapter 1 and 2 in Visual Thinking for Design by Colin Ware. (the textbook, available online).
- “Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics” by Healey and Enns. Available online. This is actually a pre-print of a paper to appear. It’s a pretty extensive survey, without a lot of detail on any one topic. There’s a bunch of overlap with the Ware Chapters, but its presented in a very different way, and it includes some newer topics that I think will become quite valuable in the years to come. This paper is an extended version of a web page. The web page has a few interactive demos, and a few different topics (but its missing a few topics from the paper).
Both readings are required.
There are two recommended readings:
- Visual Perception by WIlliam Thompson. Chapter 22 of Fundamentals of Computer Graphics (by Shirley, et al). (it’s Chapter 21 of the 2nd edition). For those of you who have the CS559 textbook, there is a great chapter on perception in there. This is much more of a “basic facts about perception” thing, and it covers many of the more advanced perception topics (like depth).
- The nature and status of visual resources. Steve Franconeri. (pdf here) – this is a survey, similar to Healey and Enns above, but written more from the psychology side. The first part, where he characterizes the various kinds of limitations on our visual system is something I’ve found really valuable. The latter parts, where he discusses some of the current theories for why these limitations happen is interesting (to me), but less directly relevant to visualization (since it is mainly trying to explain limits that we need to work around). I think these explanations may lead to new ideas for visualization – but its less direct of a path.
The first is a great overview of perception (it formed the basis for a nice textbook). It’s more general than the other readings. The second is a different way to approach Healey and Enns. The first is optional since I have no easy way to get it everyone, the second is optional since a lot of it overlaps Healey and Enns.
Do the required readings before class on Monday, February 20th. Before Monday morning (the 20th), please post a comment on the Piazza page for this reading. One question you might want to address: what most surprised you about how we see, and how will that change the way you look at visualizations?