“New Mediators are practitioners who combine methods from design, journalism, and narrative analysis. The result is designed transparency — information that is not only made available, but accessible, relevant and beautiful. ”

He creates small movies and in them breaks down complex information into images. I wonder if this approach could be used to create dashboards that are neither static nor interactive but story telling. To me thinking along these lines would be the way forward in dashboard development. Instead of presenting only the facts you tell your users what they are actually looking at and why it is important. After having done that you could still give them options to further investigate the data. I believe that this approach has some advantages: it helps explain things better, it is more interesting to look at and it will help to memorise important facts.

Anton Roodhuijzen

Thanks for pointing out that the terms “engineer” and “designer” mean different things to different people. Designers, as I define the term, determine how something should look and function to perform a particular task. Engineers figure out how to make things look and function as designed. Engineers implement designs, using them as a blueprint, transforming them into something real. In the realm of software, although some people can do both, the roles are distinct. Designers use images and words to describe how a product should look and function and then engineers write code to make it function as described. In my work, I create the blueprints; I rarely build the house.

Steve

“The goal of the artist is to produce an observable artifact that provokes an aesthetic response. Art is a means of self-expression on topics of emotional or intellectual concern to the artist and, sometimes, to society at large.”

“Designers, on the other hand, create artifacts for people other than themselves. Whereas the concern of contemporary artists is primarily self-expression, visual designers are concerned with clear communication.”

I greatly admire the works of both Tufte and Few. Each of their contributions to this field have been enormous. I have been fortunate enough to attend both of their workshops. Both were excellent but both were radically different.

Tufte’s was like a day at the theater of data visualization. It was informative, inspiring, and beautiful. And when it was over, I left feeling energized.

Stephen’s, on the other hand, was more like a three day data visualization and analysis boot camp. It was a non-stop mix of class room work, breakout sessions where you had to complete assignments with a work group, and Q&A sessions, but most of all, it was filled with practical information you could immediately use in the business world.

It’s impossible for me to come up with an idea that would make the best visualizations even better; I’m not publishing books or writing whitepapers on the topic. But visualization as a whole would also be better if bad examples were less abundant.

Excel is by far the most accessible tool and is responsible for spreading bad practice. Chris’ point about removing pyramid charts and products like BonaVista’s Chart Tamer approach the problem by making the application better. Though Microsoft doesn’t get everything right, they collect wide information on feature use (their Customer Experience Improvement Program) and I bet there are real people out there who would be upset if their beloved Pie of Pie chart disappeared.

Books like Show Me the Numbers and examples like Jorge’s Demographic Dashboard approach the problem by educating the application’s users. I’ve been to Tufte’s one day course and loved it. But Tableau, Illustrator, seminars, or books on theory before practice are probably too much of an undertaking for most – investment is a barrier to education.

Few’s Visual Communication whitepaper was what first got me hooked on the subject because it explained theory with a focus on business data. This blog and the others on the subject do the same. Tufte the Artist is inspiring, but most of us make charts as part of our professions, not for the aesthetics. Anyone can make better visualizations with readily available tools and quick lessons from the experts.

Better tools and interaction sound great for making the best better, but spreading digestible bits of education will make the biggest difference for the widest audience.

In any case, on to why that’s interesting. 1) it’s a very subtle distinction and if someone is not “in the know” they may not appreciate it and even those in the know may understand the differences … differently. For me, when we’re talking about artist and designer; the artist takes the role of blue sky creator – the creative force behind the vision of a website for instance – while the designer takes the role of executing that vision in the ‘real world’ – something that will actually function within a boundary of constraints that the artist is not usually worried about.

By way of another analogy, if the artist is the architect, the designer is the construction (could be a civil engineer right?) contractor on hand to bring the architect’s vision to bear (is that an analogy I lifted from you? I know I read it some where). So would I tend to think designer = visual engineer in Jorge’s analogy.

Don’t you just love semantics? :~)

-Clint

This is Moses. I appreciate both your interest and critique of my work. I am, of course, always happy to have my work compared to Tufte’s, who in many respects will always be the master. I’d like to respond to a few of your points in an attempt to clarify and further the discussion.

You mentioned that you don’t know when I became aware of the need for better information visualization. As is true of many others as well, I experienced an epiphany while attending one of Tufte’s one-day seminars many years ago. I had been working in the field of business intelligence for many years already, but hadn’t ever thought much about the way we present information. Because of that experience, the seeds of my current work were planted. Contrary to your assumption that I didn’t embrace Tufte’s principles because I was an aesthete like him, my immediate response focused as much on the beauty of his work as its efficiency. I don’t draw a line between beauty and usefulness. To me, there is great beauty in anything that combines elegance and effectiveness. I would love to write a book someday with “beauty” or “beautiful” in the title. Doing so would feed my soul, but for now I’m focusing on the practical skills that most people need—people who would run away in terror if they thought the production of “beauty” was expected of them.

You mentioned that I create my charts using Excel while Tufte insists on Adobe Illustrator, an artist’s tool. My choice to use Excel to create the charts that appear in “Show Me the Numbers” was made for practical reasons, to make the lessons that I teach in the book accessible to a broad audience, even those who rely exclusively on Excel—a vast majority. In truth, I transferred every one of those charts into Adobe Illustrator to improve their resolution and on occasion touch them up a bit before placing them in the book so the images would appear both practical and beautiful in print. Illustrator was also the tool that I used for all of my designs in “Information Dashboard Design.” When no software can produce charts as I want them to look, just like Tufte, I rely on Illustrator.

“Tufte, the Artist vs. Few, the Engineer”? I propose a slight change to characterize the relationship of our work more accurately. “Tufte, the Artist and Few, the Designer.” By nature, I view the world through the eyes of a designer and solve problems primarily from this perspective as well. I appreciate the work of fine engineers and worked as a software engineer myself for several years, but the role didn’t suit me.

“Why interaction (and animation) is absent from Tufte’s and Few’s books is something I don’t really understand.” I can easily explain why this is true of my two existing books. This is because both of my books are about data presentation, not data sense-making. Most of the quantitative messages that people need to communicate to others do not require interaction with the display other than looking and thinking. My new book, due to be released in June, deals with data sense-making, and therefore addresses interaction extensively, as do many of the articles that I’ve written. Interaction drives the process of data analysis.

“The issue here is to find a balance between the need to correctly display the data and the emotional response that helps keep the audience interested.” I don’t believe that tension exists between correct display and emotional response. I believe that if you present information that people need and care about in the clearest and most accurate manner possible, only then can people experience the truth—including the emotional truth—that lives in the data. I welcome anything in a visual display that communicates the story truthfully and with all the emotional impact it deserves.

Take care my friend,

Steve