“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