Activity theory, like distributed cognition, is another theoretical framework that is familiar to many of us, and has been used in HCI research. The more I read about activity theory, the more I feel it is addressing very similar issues as distributed cognition, but from a different perspective with different emphases. Distributed cognition has its […]
Q: All these terms, mental models, schemas, coordination, etc. they are pretty fuzzy and not definite. I believe that to understand how InfoVis works we must understand how the brain works. A: First, understanding a phenomenon often involves multiple levels of description and explanation (e.g. the famous AI researcher David Marr proposed three levels of […]
1. Telling stories using visualization - visual primacy It is almost impossible to talk about InfoVis without mentioning Tufte. His four books beautifully illustrate how to explain and present complex data using visual means. These books are certainly for designers, more specifically, info graphics designers. The approach can be summarized as: tell good stories with […]
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 […]