Reading: Edward Tufte - Color and Information (Chapter 5)

I agreed with most of the points in this reading. I thought that color should be used more sparingly. I especially liked the point that viewers of a graph wont remember the order of color gradients. For example, i don’t actually remember the order of ROYGBIV as I look at color coded stock prices. These color gradients can be dangerous to use because a viewer will need to continually cross reference the color key for context.

Reading: Steven Few - The Chartjunk Debate. A Close Examination of Recent Findings

I am anti no chart junk. I know that is a mouthful. But I do not agree with Edward Tufte’s stance that charts need to be devoid of character and as minimal and stripped down as possible. Steven Few’s survey showed that embellishment is useful for a chart that can be explained in a single sentence. This feels intuitive. However, I think there will be more interactive elements to information in the future. For example, how will schoolchildren explore virtual reality information landscapes. I do not think that Tufte’s minimal landscape would be the best approach for meaningful sense making in immersive data. And I also don’t think that Few’s embellishment of simple data would help to tell meaningful stories about complex multidimensinal data. I would be interested in exploring more research on immersive information landscapes.