Four pillars of visualization - by Noah Iliinsky

Noah Iliinsky
Center for Advanced Visualization, IBM
@noahi

Four Pillars of Visualization

© 2013 IBM Corporation

About the Speaker
§  Noah Iliinsky
§  Center for Advanced Visualization, IBM
§  Noah Iliinsky is the author of Designing
Data Visualizations and the technical editor
of, and a contributor to, Beautiful
Visualizations, both published by O’Reilly
Media.
§  He has spent the last several years
researching effective approaches to
creating diagrams and data visualization.
§  He has a master’s in Technical
Communication from the University of
Washington, and a bachelor’s in Physics
from Reed College


Why Visualization?


Why visualization?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

Visualization makes data accessible.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

Your brain is a pattern-detecting machine.

We’re extremely good at
detecting patterns and
pattern violations:
• trends
• gaps
• outliers


When are visualizations
successful?


A Successful Visualization

1. Has clear purpose
2. Includes (only) the relevant
content
3. Uses appropriate structure
4. Has useful formatting


A Successful Visualization

1.  purpose – why this visualization
2.  content – what to visualize
3.  structure – how to visualize it
4.  formatting – everything else


Purpose > Content > Structure > Formatting

For creators, do you know:
• Why am I creating this visualization?
• Who is it for?
• What do they need to understand?
• What actions do you need to enable?



How will it be
consumed?


http://www.apple.com


Purpose dictates the deliverable.
Different destinations require different maps.

http://maps.google.com



http://many-eyes.com/manyeyes/page/Visualization_Options.html


• What data matters?
• What relationships matter?
• Informed by purpose!
• What’s excluded is as important as
what’s included.




http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html



http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-bigger-than-microsoft-2012-2


• How do we best reveal the most
important data and relationships?
(Position!)
• Choose meaningful layout and axes!
• Use both axes! (Both, not three…)
• Informed by purpose and content!

Structure: Position is everything.


http://hipmunk.com

Structure: Position is everything.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

http://hipmunk.com

absolute & relative departure time (continuous)
absolute & relative arrival time (continuous)
absolute & relative length of trip (continuous)
stopovers (binary)
absolute & relative stopover duration (continuous)
absolute & relative stopover start & stop time (continuous)
sort order (ranked)


Structure fail.


http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/post/33308788744/from-the-boston-metro-oct-10th-hannabeth-well


Structure fixed.

http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/post/33308788744/from-the-boston-metro-oct-10th-hannabeth-well


3D is bad,
mmkay?

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2013.pdf


• How should it look and feel?
• How will it be consumed?
• Makes data and relationships
accessible.
• Makes importance visible.
• Informed by purpose, content, and
structure!

What does success look like?

Formatting
Structure
Content
Purpose

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pound_layer_cake.jpg


Formatting
should be
functional.


Free material from www.gapminder.org


•  Structure is geographical
map.
•  Colored shading encodes
category.
•  Dot size represents
quantity.
•  Outlines call attention to
interesting areas.


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/02/us/chicago-killings.html

Highlight what matters, remove the rest

• Geography is modified to
show logical meaning
• Colors encode party.
• Saturation encodes
turnout.
• Outlines group regions.
• All other details removed.


http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/04/mapping-britain



http://ComplexDiagrams.com/properties

Checklist

• Is the purpose well-defined?
• Does the content support the purpose?
• Does the structure reveal the content?
• Does the formatting facilitate
consumption?
• Iterate, iterate, iterate…

Creating effective
visualizations
Choosing the right visual properties
Learn how to properly choose the visual property
(position, shape, size, color and others) to encode the
different types of data that will be presented in a
visualization.

Download your copy
http://bit.ly/successfulvis


Engage IBM Visualization Luminaries
IBM Many Eyes: Learn and Create
•  Learn visualization best practices, insights and futures
from IBM visualization luminaries
•  Create a visualization in three steps
•  ibm.com/manyeyes
•  ComplexDiagrams.com

Follow IBM visualization luminaries
•  @manyeyes
•  @noahi

Watch our luminaries
•  youtube.com/IBMVisualAnalytics


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