How to use information visualization

The art of illustration--the application of information visualization nowadays people have various kinds of data, in this pile of easily overlooked complex data fields, visualization Mining The story to tell you. This is where information visualization is characterized by . Information visualization, originated from the data visualization, popular is that we are familiar with the pie chart, histogram, scatter, column charts and other statistical charts. History theory and tangled terminology we will not elaborate, and then put a post from Ucdchina about information visualization.

Previously, information visualization in the public sounded unusually inscrutable, involving cartography, graphic design, data collection, statistics, graphic technology and so on. In recent years, because of the lovely designers of the world, the original cold and mechanical science diagram into an approachable and attractive "art", which is also the recent popularity of information visualization reasons. Today we are talking about these "artworks" that are made using information visualization thinking.

The information visualization is divided into two kinds of common design types, one is presenting data and the other is stating viewpoints.

1: Rendering Data
Designers use intuitive and highly aesthetic visual representation of the data presented, the reader in the "art" when the natural reading contains some interesting stories. (for example, look at the number of Facebook user connections, you can see the connection is not even beautiful to the Chinese territory.) )

Number of Facebook global user connections:

QQ Real-time online number of visualization:

In addition to the above two maps based visualization, a variety of traditional statistical charts have been redesigned, graphically beautified, visualized visualization of this type.

Visualization of various rendering data types:

Interactive Data presentation

In the visualization of the data rendering class, the designer's job is to attract the readers to excavate the story in the data, so in addition to the visual beautification of the data, it will also consider the design of the reading experience, that is, the common interactive way to render the whole visualization.

Here to share a case: "University-autonomy"

The University-autonomy website mainly allows readers to quickly contrast the autonomous state of European universities with the tendency of reading functionality. The site is divided into four types of homemade state with different colors: organizational autonomy (orange), financial allocation (red), Teaching and appointment (magenta) and academic self-control (dark purple). And all have their own small icons, to reduce the cost of reading, each representative country is also presented on the map. When browsing, you can click on a country to browse the data, or one of the four categories to view the comparison of countries. For example, to open the United Kingdom, the round flag icon around the four-color dotted point, a color bar on the point of more and less to indicate a number of autonomy scores. In contrast to other countries, Britain is the first in the organization system, including the freedom to decide autonomous organizations, the selection of various aspects, the determination of tenure and the establishment of the internal structure of the Department and so on. This interactive visualization is more important to optimize the reading experience of the data, to know which aspects of the data to be decided by the reader, the designer provides a comfortable visual reading environment.

2: Stating the point of view

The visualization of the viewpoint statement class is that the designer first analyzes the data and tells the reader the view directly.

The most common is the information and graphics video:

A: Information charts

For example, "human chest" in the information map said some and we are closely related but did not study the data, directly to tell the reader to explore the views of the designer. "The nipple height of the normal state of the female is only 3/8 of the height." The average expansion is as high as five 25 cents. "(Is it a bit of a coin to try to fold the feeling?)

Human Chest Device:

This type of visualization has an obvious advantage over the data rendering class, that it is more "crude" for the reader to accept the information and is simpler to design.

Recently, a lot of games have tried this kind of visualization in propaganda

such as the DNF Arad Secret History Project

Combine the DNF player analysis with what the project team wants to advertise and the corresponding player data to look for ideas, for example, players like to discuss the sky sets, that is to dig blind sky sets of relevant data, who bought, what identity, where the city, these constitute a fun point of view, and the combination of ideas to add emotional picture performance, In the form of interactive website.

The story of--boss in the second phase of Arad:

B: Graphic video

Compared to the information graph, the graphic video is mainly different in the way of expression, it is not the same to the readers, but it needs a good director.

Here is a Pinterest visual video: Pinterest Statistics Facts

Pinterest Statistics Facts:

Video design is very delicate, including the overall tone and graphics dynamic, careful can find the information displayed inside the graphic design is very image, including the Pinterest ratio of male and female users directly pull the image of girls, age-level icons with birthday cake candle lights to Do Bar charts and so on, Full of love details intriguing.

Graphic video has an advantage over information graphs is a good dynamic demo plus dubbing, you can make up for the lack of visual design, such as this paragraph of "5 minutes, let you know what taxes you have paid" in the view is very relevant to the public sentiment, the view is unusually sharp, even if the visual design can generally make us resonate.

Visual design methods--comparison and metaphor

Both data presentation and point of view presentation, contrast and metaphor are the most commonly used techniques in visual design.

A: Contrast--a comparison can produce a story.

Like Goldstar beer commercials, designers visualize the entire behavior of men's and women's toilets in a flow chart, because the story is intriguing because of the contrast between men and women. So that the target audience understands a point of view "Thank God you're a man!"

Goldstar Beer Advertising:

The University-autonomy Web site is also the one that allows readers to read their views in contrast to national university data.

B: Metaphor-the unfamiliar to become familiar with

Data to us are unfamiliar and complex feeling, no one will be interested in a lot of annoying data, designers in the Data rendering class visual design, many will use the metaphor of the method, the readers feel unfamiliar with the data into their familiar or cognitive things presented to them to achieve resonance.

This exquisite Dara is Chris Milk an art project in the UK

First a group of artists to draw a short video, then other participants can be on the site to continue to do a short video of Solitaire. (This does not detail the entire art project, has the related introduction to be interested can see the project introduction video)

The main introduction here is a visual site that the designer makes use of the figurative method, the original video of all artists is likened to the root of the tree, and each participant's solitaire will produce a leaf, and eventually the entire site's vision will be generated by the participants, and it is intuitive to see the small clips of the Solitaire is particularly large (flourish).

This exquisite Dara:

This analogy with the cosmic music interface, there are related video

It compares all the music data to a universe, and the music plays a long analogy to the orbit of the planet, as well as the information visualization of figurative manipulations.

Conclusion：

In fact, information visualization is a research direction that needs huge knowledge system in interdisciplinary field, but it does not mean that we are so far away from us, we are learning an information visualization way of thinking, creating ways and means to convey abstract information intuitively, with our designer's unique perspective, From the trusted data of the oil fields to dig the story!