Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2007/08 - Gruppe 09 - Aufgabe 3

Poor Graphic

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Critics

Data-Ink Ratio

The goal is to design a display that has the highest possible data-ink ratio (that is, as close to the total of 1.0 or 100% as possible), without eliminating something that is necessary for effective communication.

[Few Article, 2004]

Following this principle unnecessary non-data ink will be removed. Therefore the background picture and the unnecessary graphics will be removed. Furthermore unnecessary data ink will be removed or replaced.

In the next step the most important data should be emphasized. Since the attention of the reader should be drawn on the information that men more often dream about violence and conflicts, whereas women lead in having depressive dreams, this information should be emphasized with some special markup. For example, the bars, which having the dreams of the men ahead, could be colored with a more saturated color.

Visual Means to Highlight Data

A contrasting version of any visual attribute, rendered differently from the norm — whatever the norm — demands attention. … Anything different catches our eyes and begs us to assign meaning, to understand the significance of that difference.

[Few Article, 2004]

As mentioned above we want to draw the reader’s attention to the difference between women and men’s dreams. As the most important data in the graphic is that men dream more about violence, this part should be emphasized. Therefore the men’s violence bars could be drawn with a darker color.

Background

Non-data ink, consistent with its supporting role, should stand out just enough from the background to serve its purpose but not so much that it draws attention. This can be achieved through the use of thin lines and soft, neutral colors (e.g. light gray).

[Few, 2004]

Following this rule, all the background pictures should be erased, and replaced with some background that does not draw much attention, but serves the purpose of a background.

Emphasize the most important data ink

Regardless of the encoding method, certain visual attributes of objects, words, and numbers stand out more than others.

[Few, 2004]

Hue, Enclosure, Size, Line width and more are attributes which can be used to emphasize the most important data ink. The most important data in our graphic is the relationship between men and women´s dreams. So this part of the graphic should be emphasized.

Your message may require multiple tables, multiple graphs, or a combination of both, along with additional text in the form of bullet points, sentences, or even whole paragraphs. When you arrange this information on the page or screen, you must do so consciously to tell a story. What should I say first? What should I save for last? … The answers to these questions take on the form of visual attributes designed to accomplish the following:

Group the data (i.e., segment the data into meaningful subsets)
Prioritize the data (i.e., rank the data by importance)
Sequence the data (i.e., give direction for the order in which the data

.

[Few, 2004]

Since we want to draw the attention to the data which shows the violence data the order of the data could be changed. That the reader begins at the left, subsequently follows the graph to the right and that his look at the graphic ends with a ‘wow’ effect.

Prioritize the Data

Whenever you communicate quantitative information, it is imperative that you step back from it and ask yourself, “What are the important numbers here?” Once you´ve established a clear sense of what´s important, you should make that information stand out clearly from the rest.

[Few, 2004]

As mentioned already we want to draw the reader’s attention to the violence dreams. But the data shows as well the interesting point that depressive dreams are underrepresented, at least concerning this survey, in dreams. There are some ways to prioritize the data. For this example we think it is useful to concentrate on the hue or a lesser saturation of the depressive bar color.