Tufte, Chapter 6: Narratives of Space and Time

I thought this chapter of Tufte was very interesting, especially because many of the examples felt like they tied back to some of the prior chapters. One section that interested me was the part about timetable and schedule design. Tufte writes that “Schedules are among the most widely used information displays” and says that there have been efforts to organize schedule information for 150 years. This stuck out because the widespread nature of schedules/timetables made me take for granted the design choices that go into making them. I also feel like there is a new wave of trying to redesgn/display schedule information because of the shift towards digitizing schedules and displaying them effectively in the mobile/web space.

This chapter also made me realize how challenging of a task it is to represent spatial and temporal information on a flat plane. With technology we are able to filter out information and move between different representations at the click of the button. However, on paper there are several limitations in terms of dimensions that can be represented before the information becomes too dense and cluttered for paper. One effective example I found was the Czechoslovakia air transport map. The balance between space and time information really felt effective and overall the map felt really clean (not too information dense + there was plenty of white space). On the contrary side, I was quite confused by the serpentined data representations like the Tokyo water supply bar chart. As much as I tried to look at the charts, I genuinely could not understand why someone would ever choose this representation because it felt both confusing in terms of conveying information as in addition to being aesthetically displeasing.

The bus schedule as an example of a graphical schedule was another point of interest for me. Initially I thought the jumbled lines during peak rush hours were a point of design failure, but after reading the description I realized that the relevant information is simply being conveyed through a different property of the schedule: its line density, as opposed to the familiar numerical representation that may be used for the rest of the times. I feel like this really shows how one can play with information representation in unique ways without compromising its functionality.