What kinds of visualization resources is everyone most interested in having?
(examples, patterns, blogs, research, applications, inspiration, innovation, etc)

In studying or observing info vis, what have you have to be most helpful in communicating its usefulness?

I often find myself trying to describe to the ”average” businessman or layman what it is, and have yet to boil it down into something really simple and intuitive…particularly in terms of its usefulness. I’m learning, however, I think it has less to do with what I’m saying and more so the pace at which I say it. Oddly enough, we need to make sure we’re not information overloading in describing something that makes complex ideas and realities simple.

How do you describe it? What’s your info vis elevator speech?

Giacomo, those are all fantastic sites/resources. Thanks for sharing!

here’s some interesting infoaesthetics websites:

_http://www.bestiario.org/
_http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
_http://serialconsign.com/projects/2009/information-visualization-interface-culture
_http://benfry.com/
_http://stamen.com/
_http://burak-arikan.com/
_http://www.elastico.net/
_http://infosthetics.com/

Drat. I can’t get the forum on this website to work… so I’ll just post thoughts here. Feedback/contributions welcome. happy designing today..
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Caroline and Robert have published a thoughtful study that, as they surely know, is the tip of the iceberg in terms of visual metaphor. I appreciate their efforts to explore the lowest common denominator in visual information, location, specifically through ’container’ and ’levels’ (suggesting hierarchy). Compatible and incompatible pairings are the device understanding the connection between visual and verbal. They use five visual metaphor models: node-link diagram, treemap, icicle plot, radial tree, and tree rings. Here is a list of key points.

- Metaphor and its effect on preconceived attachment to information
- Verbal vs. Visual metaphor conceptual presentation
- The fundamental connectivity between visual and verbal metaphors
- Male vs. Female, some significant differences
- Verbal preconceptions do not significantly dominate visual language understanding
- Preconceptions are more clearly discovered through verbal triggers
- Social diversity encourages studying the differing factors that impact visualization interpretation in pursuit of more elegant visuals

Furthermore, I think it would interesting and relevant to study more thoroughly interpretation competency based on age, not only for the purpose of better understanding human capability as we age but also in uncovering the significance of the cultural upbringing that has created our visual worldview. Our verbal upbringings surely shift from decade to decade as well as our analytical triage. What we’re always trying to uncover is the relevant information, and, as we well know, people go about that differently from learned behavior. Perhaps the best question to pose before asserting visual analogy, is how we visually and verbally determine importance. Location is obviously innate and natural, but so is danger and threat. The two (location and danger) are tied mentally. Discovering importance processing and data density flow in relation to response time verses answer accuracy could enhance the study of verbal-visual preconceptions.

PDF link:
http://webpages.uncc.edu/~caziemki/documents/ziemkiewicz09_preconceptions.pdf

I am in the middle of reading this paper presented at the recent EuroVis 2009 Conference. Looks rather interesting considering its logical to pursue our native visual metaphors as a more streamlined approach to the study of understanding data/content. I’ll post any thoughts on the reading here and encourage anyone to do the same after reading and personal reflection.