Visualising Data: A Travelogue
Posted on June 17, 2014 in Uncategorized by Eric Lease Morgan
Last month a number of us from the Hesburgh Libraries attended a day-long workshop on data visualisation facilitated by Andy Kirk of Visualising Data. This posting documents some of the things I learned.
First and foremost, we were told there are five steps to creating data visualisations. From the handouts and supplemented with my own understanding, they include:
- establishing purpose – This is where you ask yourself, “Why is a visualisation important here? What is the context of the visualization?
- acquiring, preparing and familiarising yourself with the data – Here were echoed different data types (open, nominal, ordinal, intervals, and ratios), and we were introduced to the hidden costs of massaging and enhancing data, which is something I do with text mining and others do in statistical analysis.
- establishing editorial focus – This is about asking and answering questions regarding the visualisation’s audience. What is their education level? How much time will they have to absorb the content? What medium(s) may be best used for the message?
- conceiving the design – Using just paper and pencil, draw, brainstorm, and outline the appearance of the visualisation.
- constructing the visualisation – Finally, do the work of making the visualisation a reality. Increasingly this work is done by exploiting the functionality of computers, specifically for the Web.
Here are a few meaty quotes:
- Context is king.
- Data preparation is a hidden cost in visualization.
- Data visualisation is a tool for understanding, not fancy ways of showing numbers.
- Data visualisation is about analysis and communication.
One of my biggest take-aways was the juxtaposition of two spectrum: reading to feeling, and explaining to exploring. In other words, to what degree is the visualization expected to be read or felt, and to what degree is it offering the possibilities to explain or explore the data? Kirk illustrated the idea like this:
read
.
/ \
|
|
explain <-----+-----> explore
|
|
\ /
.
feel
The the reading/feeling spectrum reminded me of the usability book entitled Don’t Make Me Think. The explaining/exploring spectrum made me consider interactivity in visualisations.
I learned two other things along the way: 1) creating visualisations is a team effort requiring a constellation of skilled people (graphic designers, statisticians, content specialists, computer technologists, etc.), and 2) is it entirely plausible to combine more than one graphic — data set illustration — into a single visualisation.
Now I just need to figure out how to put these visualisation techniques into practice.
