Stephen Few infovis capstone
2 November 2007
[last post from Fernanda Viégas at Infovis'07, (thank you Fernanda!)]
Stephen Few’s capstone entitled “Infovis as Seen by the World Out There: 2007 in Review” managed to paint a vivid picture of how outsiders see infovis. The balance isn’t very positive, being peppered with misconceptions. Steve guided us through a scary litany of examples, starting with information-starved, 3Dish business dashboards. He also revieed the four main sources of exposure people have to infovis these days: blogs, the media, books, and the “visualiti” (visualization celebrities.) Even though the current state of affairs is far from ideal, he finds that the future is more promising.
He revealed that blogs’ coverage of infovis is a mixed blessing. While popular blog sites such as Smashing Magazine have attempted to introduce their readers to the state of the art in data visualization, such articles often highlight poor examples of visualization (think shiny, 3Dish business charts again). A particularly bad example is the “periodic table of visualization methods” which, as he pointed out, utilizes a metaphor (the periodic table of the elements) that carries absolutely no relation to the content of the information it displays.
Steve wasn’t too keen on a lot of the media and publishing attention infovis has been getting lately. Of note was his disenchantment with Edward Tufte’s latest book “Beautiful Evidence.”
[links: perceptualedge.com & (Stephen's book "Information Dashboard Design") & b-eye-network.com]
emotionally vague survey results 2008 presidential election in the blogosphere distributions of sport world records TerraForm people-based infographic movie subway map bathroom tiling Mycrocosm personal data graph portal Fleshmap crowdsourcing sex physical information sculptures Ben Shneiderman as interface to infovis visual poetry 2007 & 2008 wireless wifi strength heatmap debategraph debate maps John Lennon interview infographic movie analogue eco-visualization
On a more positive note, he mentioned the importance of what he calls the “visualiti,” that is, celebrities who help shape the public perception of infovis. Here he hailed the influence of Tufte, Al Gore (on the movie An Inconvenient Truth), and Hans Rosling’s video at the TED conference. “When Al Gore got up on that crane to show the amount of CO2 by the year 2050, he became an infovis icon!”
Steve also showed excitement about a new flavor of infovis venue: massive, public visualization sites such as Swivel and Many Eyes.
As infovis goes mainstream, public perception becomes a key factor for visualization adoption and growth. Steve showed that we have a long way to go. Thanks for the sanity check!
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