Edward TufteEnvisioning & Designing Data

A Fair Warning

Edward Tufte• Born 1942

• Yale University

• Data visualization and information design

Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

"The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?"

Flatlands• Design Metaphor

• To present data well, “escape” the flatlands to higher dimensions.

• Not simply a matter of 3D design

Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

"Escaping this flatland is the essential task of envisioning information - for all the interesting worlds (physical, biological, imaginary, human) that we seek to understand are inevitably and happily multivariate in nature. Not flatlands."

Suddenly, perspective

Micro/Macro Readings• Multiple time scales of information

• A larger story that invites exploration

• We have to go deeper

Layering & Separation• Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attribution of

information

• Reduce noise by visual distinction between data via shape, size, etc.

• Google maps has geography and road maps

What’s wrong with this design?

Reduce clutter by removing implicit data (e.g. Name)

Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

“The interior decoration of graphics generates a lot of ink that does not tell the viewer anything new. The purpose of decoration varies — to make the graphic appear more scientific and precise, to enliven the display, to give the designer an opportunity to exercise artistic skills. Regardless of its cause, it is all non-data-ink or redundant data-ink, and it is often chartjunk.”

Chartjunk• Tested by the “Ink-Data Ratio”. How much data is represented versus

ink (or pixels) used?

Don’t Decorate

...or at least don’t decorate first

At one point, this was preferred

Sparklines

Narrative of Space & Time• Time-series data

• Add spatial dimensions

• Reduce the complexity of data down to the core “point”

The Greatest Statistical Chart Ever Made

Napoleon’s march and retreat (Minard 1869)

What info matters for a subway trip?

Video link for later: PowerPoint is Evil

PowerPoint is Evil