[Visinfo] responses to BenFry and Baker & Bushell

[Jennifer Bernstein]

Hi all,
Here they are. 
Have a great weekend.
-jenn

BEN FRY (dissertation)
I appreciate the work of Ben Fry. I appreciate his
philosophy of information design, I appreciate his
writing style, and I appreciate what he has
contributed to the formalization of the field. That
said, his work seems to be very creator-centered. As I
see it, information design differs from art in that
that there is a right and wrong way to do it. The
creation of good data graphics can be made inside a
room based on a set of principles without ever needing
to check whether the graphic resonates with the user.
The principles of Information design seem
straightforward once explained to a user, but the
explanation is necessary nonetheless. This seems
particularly relevant when the information visualized
is abstract. I like all his examples in Ch7 of his
dissertation, but I’m not sure what to say beyond
“wow, cool.”

BAKER and BUSHELL
The Baker and Bushell paper was interesting to read,
as I had seen the before and after versions of the
storm visualization. It took some guts to revise ones
own design publicly. I find redesigning graphs and
charts a great process to go through to apply the
principles of good information design. 
I liked the decision to include small multiples of the
stages of the storm at the bottom. I find that viewers
like to know where they are in a process, even if
other (numerical) means of orientation oneself in time
are offered. To be able to see the stages of the storm
in static form while the animation plays is a good
design strategy.
I especially appreciated an issue raised during the
discussion on color. The authors were struggling with
the choosing between a color scheme whose meaning was
familiar to the target audience and a color scheme
that made sense from a design standpoint. For
instance, the rainbow color scheme is familiar to many
viewers, and according to the authors, holds
significance in different disciplines. But from a
design standpoint, it implied breaks in a continuous
phenomena. How do you make this decision? Do you use
good design that is less cognitively viable, or design
that misrepresents the information although it isn’t
perceived as such? Stacy?