Recently some colleagues shared an interesting documentary video (embedded above, from 3:00 onwards) about how the Himba perceive colors, and how language plays an important role in shaping color perception. It seems intuitive to us that visual perception, especially pre-attentive processing, is hard-wired in the brain. That is, endowed with the same neurological machinery, every [...]
During this year’s VisWeek (truly great conferences, I must say), some friends expressed interests in my work on theoretical / cognitive approaches to InfoVis. They complained however that my papers were no easy read - which was a bit surprising to me. I’ve tried very hard to make the arguments understandable, and you would believe [...]
All visualizations are actually cultural artifacts. Saying that a scatter plot or a Treemap is cultural however is not particularly meaningful or resonating to members within the western culture. Our thoughts are so significantly influenced and structured by the culture we are immersed in, that culture is transparent and sometimes trivial to us. Cultural aspects [...]