Source: Information Visualization, Perception for design,Collin Ware Sensory and Arbitrary symbols

• Sensory representations are effective because they’re matched to early stages of neural processing. (ie cave paintings still giving it’s meaning thousands of years later).Arbitrary conventions derive their power from culture, and therefore are dependent on it.
• Properties of sensory representations:
• Understanding without training: the meaning is perceived without additional training
• Resistance to instructional bias: visual illusions persists because they’re hardwired in our brains, so they’re resistant, bottom-line facts.
• Sensory immediacy: information is neurally processed in parallel, this processing is hardwired and fast, so that we can separate information in segments, segmentation (ie. texture below)
• 
• Cross-cultural validity: will be understood across cultural boundaries. When not, its most likely because a sensory code has been arbitrarily dictated to be used against it’s natural interpretation.
• Characteristics of arbitrary codes
• Hard to learn: It takes many hours to learn to read and write even if we already know to speak.
• Easy to forget: In contrast, sensory can never be forgotten. If we overlearn an arbitrary code (ie numbers), the code will never be forgotten.
• Embedded in culture and applications: Color meaning is mostly culture-specific. Some arbitrary representations can be nearly universal, and many time has been invested in them, becoming standardized. That means that even if new, more sensory representations where developed, the effort would be in vain. Note: This reminds me of how all over the world we use the QWERTY keyboard layout and have spent a great deal of time teaching-learning it, and it has become the standard, even though the DVORAK keyboard layout has been identified of being faster to type,intuitive, and ergonomic (I have tested it) . For those that don’t remember, in the old times of mechanical typewriters, the keys got stuck if you became a fast typer, so many sources dispute that QWERTY was designed to slow down typing, and maybe there is a little bit of truth in that.
• Formally powerful: Arbitrary mathematical constructs can convey a lot of power to express concepts. That doesn’t make it easier to learn.
• Capable of rapid change: our visual systems have evolved to understand sensory codes, but that took millions of years. Arbitrary codes appear faster, and in this time computers aid in their invention.

Tags: teoría, usabilidad

Now its the turn for another book,MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer, by Hillman Curtis

Creative Process by Hillman Curtis:

• Listen: Reading Tarot cards is very similar to what designers do. You act as an interpreter using visual language as a tool for revealing what your clients are interested in. Listen to your clients.
• What’s the story? Ask them what they love about the current design, and also ask them what they hate about the current design
• Unite: everyone should be working towards the same goal.
• Inclusion: everyone is creative, don’t immediately dismiss the ’suits’
• Involve the client early and often: The longer you work on anything, the more emotionally attached you become, making it harder to understand another point of view.
• Establish goals early: Give priorities to real goals of communication. Insecurities such as “will my boss like it?” “I have to cover my ass” get in the way of communication. Don’t hinder the design just because someone is trying to cover their ass.
• Keep it simple: Be able to pitch the entire idea in one sentence
• Filter: Remember Hemingway -”write the story, take out the good lines and see if it still works”
• Justify: Point to something in the design and then try to justify it. Everything should be justified.
• Look everywhere for inspiration. Inspiration does not only come from other designs and books
• Fall in love with a master, like Picasso, and enrich yourself with their knowledge. Also, honor your contemporaries, such as other designers. They have a lot to offer.
• Make a place, not pictures. Your designs should be inviting.
• Say it clearly and you make if beautiful, no matter what.

Tags: teoría, usabilidad

I think this are the most interesting ideas of the book, so keep them in mind when doing design:

• Escaping flatland: stereo view, other approaches, but beware of false escapes that don’t provide anything meaningful

• Words are a strong deterrent to international communication
• Interesting information display
• Readers of a report should be unaware of its “design”, rather they should be enticed into reading it by interesting content, logical arrangement and simple presentation
• The beauty of micro/macro composition. “To clarify, add detail”.Such designs can report immense detail, organizing complexity through multiple and often hierarchical layers or contextual reading.
• Many times in conventional blot maps the consequences are that areas are non uniform, colored-in areas are proportional to (often nearly empty) land areas instead of the activities depicted, with large unpopulated areas often receiving greatest visual emphasis.
• Case Study: When building the Vietnam Memorial Monument, it was decided that the 58,000 names be listed by year of death instead of alphabetically.Alphabetical listing would make the Memorial look like a telephone book engraved in granite, destroying the sense of unique loss that each name carried. Also, the beauty of micro/macro design. From the distance a big back block of granite encompass what 58,000 deaths means, and when you get close you can sense the personal tragedy of each name.

• Micro-data can replace the information-empty bars of traditional bar chart

• “If we are going to make a mark, it may as well be a meaningful one. The simplest, and most useful meaningful mark is a digit”
• It is not how much empty space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is arranged
• Cluster and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.
• Simpleness is another aesthetic preference, not an information display strategy, not a guide to clarity
• What we seek instead is a rich texture of data, a comparative context, and understanding of complexity revealed with an economy of means
• God is in the details capture the essential quality of micro/macro performances
• Layering and separation is a powerful device for reducing noise and enriching the content
• The various elements collected together in flatland interact, creating non-information patterns and textures simply by their combined presence. 1+1=3 or more
• About layering: De-emphasize less important information, give focus to information, make distinctions not barricades
• Tables with rules should only be done when they’re absolutely necessary, try to organize information transparently by an implicit typographical grid, defined simply by the absence of type.

• Pure, bright or very strong colors have loud, unbearable effects when they stand unrelieved over large areas adjacent to each other, but extraordinary effects when they’re used sparingly on or between dull background tones.
• Layering of data can be achieved by subtracting weight

• The noise in 1+1=3 is directly proportional to the contrast in value (light/dark) between figure and ground. The bold shapes promotes vibration all over. Thinning 2 sides of each block results in every street bordered by one thick and one thin line.

• Type from above adjust to graphics better, because most words have fewer descenders than ascenders (check the problem with map#3)

• Grid, Silhouette and type compete at the same nervous level. In redesign, gray calms a contrasty silhouette, bringing more emphasis on the lamp’s position and motion. Lamp whiskers erased. Also the type is no longer equal in weight to the motion arrows.

• Comparisons must be enforced within the scope of the eyespan. Also, with more detail, this is not just another bar graph.

• Uses of color in information display:
  • to label (color as noun)
  • to measure (color as quantity)
  • to represent or imitate reality (color as representation)
  • to enliven or decorate (color as beauty)

• Give importance to light gray or muted background. White is not always the best option.

• The only color that satisfies the joint requirement of light in value, intense and saturated for a computer screen interface is yellow
• Color saturation as measure in information visualization

• But keep in mid of disadvantage (disturbing contextual effects,fluting and simultaneous contrast) , that’s why rainbow scales are sometimes used
• Also, a little redundancy helps minimize this effects. Here the lines eliminate edge fluting and make each field a more coherent whole.

• For narratives of space and time, some tables are better than others, consider this example in which space is poorly allocated. Much of it is used to 3 binary distinctions (new york/hew haven, leaving/arriving, and weekday/weekend

• Redesign

Tags: teoría, usabilidad