(notes on the talk)

• complicated question

  • many consumers and many producers of visual works

• the role of data visualization is to communicate (data) meaning through stories.

Definition from an old Scott Murray presentation.

"Stories" is a strange word here - for the non-artist - but let's go with it.

• one story

• 100s of stories

• excluded for now

  • what is data?
  • data is biased. data vis is biased

• data design as a process not a product

  • data visualizations are visual solutions to data driven problems

• a visualization is a product of a data design process
• can be effective
• or ineffective

• First step of a process

• Define what you are trying to communicate (broad or specific)

• Starts with who you are trying to communicate to (your audience)

Start with a question A question your audience wants the answer to http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/blog/?p=644

Helps to find the story (narrative)

• Audience can be yourself
  • Exploratory vs Explanatory

• respect the data
• respect the audience

• lots of rules to guide you -- rules meant to be broken

• Tufte Rules http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/01/a-history-of-dishonest-fox-charts/190225

• Visual Encoding Rules

• everything is a remix

• find inspiration in other work

• combine possibilities and best practices together to communicate your what and why

• sketch and hone with these 'success metrics' in mind

• context is integration -- text around to explain -- make it part of something bigger.

• context is comparison

• tufte "compared to what"

• hard thing to do

• DONT hide the good stuff

  • especially true in interaction

• Jonathan Corum example
• Dashboard example

• robust solutions to many problems (maybe yours)

-- Bar Charts -- its the KING for a reason -- good and bad bar charts.

-- Small multiples -- lots if stories - Kepler -- one big story - history of the us

-- Scatter plots -- one of the greatest exploratory tools available. -- can also be used to explain

Talk Inspiration

Talks Irene Ross: Visualizing Data Responsibly https://speakerdeck.com/iros/visualizing-data-responsibly

Rachel Binx: Peak Visualization https://speakerdeck.com/binx/peak-visualization

Data visualization hustle https://speakerdeck.com/binx/the-data-visualization-hustle

Scott Murry: Opensource your data design process https://speakerdeck.com/alignedleft/open-source-your-data-design-process

engaging audiences with data visualization https://speakerdeck.com/alignedleft/engaging-audiences-with-data-visualization

Catherine Mulbrandon: data vis best practices https://speakerdeck.com/cmulbrandon/data-visualization-best-practices

kyle murphy: 3 ways to improve data visualizations https://speakerdeck.com/noluckmurphy/3-ways-to-improve-your-data-visualizations

Jeremy Stucki:Animations in Data https://speakerdeck.com/herrstucki/animation-in-data-visualization

ffunction: 30 min of data vis: https://speakerdeck.com/ffunction/30-minutes-of-data-visualization