Design information visualizations that turn complex data into clear, accurate insight for a specific audience, grounded in how people perceive and remember, and proven effective through user testing.
Evaluate a visualization's effectiveness with real users, applying HCI heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthroughs, user observations, interviews, and focus groups, and select the right method for a given goal.
Apply Riccardo Mazza's five-step design process, working from defining the problem and the data, to choosing dimensions, mapping the underlying structure, and setting the required level of interaction.
Use visual mapping to deliberately match each data attribute to the right visual property, including color, shape, size, and spatial position.
Represent linear data, whether univariate, bivariate, or trivariate, in a clear and appropriate information visualization.
Visualize multivariate data using geometric techniques, icon-based methods, and pixel-oriented representations, so users can filter and explore many attributes at once.
Apply the three interaction models (static, transformable, and manipulable) to match the level of control a user actually needs.
Use preattentive attributes, including color, shape, and position the brain registers in under half a second, to direct attention and make key data instantly visible.
Apply the Gestalt laws of proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity to group related elements and make a visualization readable at a glance.
Build and structure network data using concept maps and mind maps, and apply established strategies for taming complex network diagrams.
Represent hierarchical data with simple hierarchy diagrams, and identify the right tools for more complex hierarchies.
Recognize information overload and decide what to reveal and what to omit, so the intended message comes through rather than the clutter.
Assess any information visualization against good-practice guidelines and give constructive feedback on others' work.
Distinguish information consumers from information analysts and design for the distinct needs of each audience.
Make the case for information visualization as a discipline, including the ethics of persuasion and the responsibility not to mislead through selective representation.
Describe how human vision and memory work together, and use the two memory types most relevant to visualization to make designs easier to understand.
