Frontiers of

Computational Journalism
Columbia Journalism School
Week 7: Visualization
November 4, 2015

CS

Data

Reporting

CS

Data

CS

CS

CS

Reporting

CS

Data

CS

Effects

Filtering

CS

Reporting

visualization most commonly

here

User

This class
Four ways of looking at visualization:
Perception
Tasks
Design
Narrative

Perception

Topic links in Gdel, Escher, Bach

Visualization allows people to ofoad cognition to the

perceptual system, using carefully designed images as a
form of external memory.
The human visual system is a very high-bandwidth
channel to the brain, with a signicant amount of
processing occurring in parallel and at the pre-conscious
level.
- Tamara Munzner

Pop-Out Effects

Visual Comparisons

length

size

orientation

color

...plus number, shape, relative motion, and much more

Basic idea of visualization:

Turn something you want to find
into something you can see
without thinking about it

clusters

outliers

extents

correlations

Tasks

Design Study Methodology: Reflections from the Trenches and the Stacks, Sedlmair et al, 2012

Inward and Outward Gran Challenges for Visualization, Tamara Munzner

A multi-level typology of abstract visualization tasks, Brehmer & Munzner

A multi-level typology of abstract visualization tasks, Brehmer & Munzner

Design

Graphic Design Principles

Visual hierarchy
Color
Typography
Whitespace
Sketching

Visual Hierarchy

Sketching
The way to make a good visualization is to try lots of
ideas quickly.

Draw the user in

User wont explore deeply if they dont learn
something immediately.
What does the user learn in
o
o
o
o

1 second
5 seconds
1 minute
5 minutes

How do you know if your design is good?

Usability testing
Metrics tell you if there is a problem, but they dont
tell you why.
There is no substitute for watching your users
interact with your work.
Basic technique is think aloud. Ask the user to say
what they are thinking while they use your story.

Narrative

Editorial choice in visualization

Data
o

what data is chosen, what omitted, which sources

Visual representation
o

encoding from data to picture

Annotations
o highlighting, text, sequence

Interactivity
o order of presentation, what user can alter

Visualization isnt objective, but that doesnt mean you cant mislead.
(Is this graph misleading?)

Another misleading graph.

Sequential Narrative

Whats Really Warming The World?, Bloomberg