DAI 523 – Information Design 1
Information design is
Information Design
Introduction
1
concerned with making
complex information easier
to understand and to use. It
is a rapidly growing
discipline that draws on
typography, graphic design,
applied linguistics, applied
psychology, applied
ergonomics, computing,
and other fields. It emerged
as a response to peopleʼs
need to understand and
use such things as forms,
legal documents, computer
interfaces and technical
information. Information
designers responding to
these needs have achieved
major economic and social
improvements in
information use.
Source: Sue Walker and
Linda Reynolds
About Information Design
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Some examples in.for.ma.tion (in'fer-

mä'ƒen) n. abbr. inf.
1. knowledge derived from
study, experience, or
instruction.
2. Knowledge communicated
concerning some particular
fact, subject, or event;
intelligence; news; word.
3. A non-accidental signal
used as an input to a
computer or communications
system.
Map of GOP shift in 2008 US presidential election.
Brown: positive change. Blue: negative change. 4. A numerical measure of the
Below: original data used to generate the map uncertainty of an experimental
(detail). Source: manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com outcome …

Schematic diagram of a general Barry M. Katz

communication system (Shannon). (extended definition)
Source: harvard.edu

1 0 1 0 1

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
The number 21 in binary form (10101).
Source: The Nothing That Is, by Robert
Kaplan. p. 204.

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Pioneers: Charles and Ray Eames What is your definition of

"design?"
A. A plan for arranging
elements in such a way as to
best accomplish a particular
purpose.

Q. Is design an expression of
art (an art form)?
A. The design is an
expression of the purpose. It
may (if it is good enough)
later be judged as art.

Q. Is design a craft for

industrial purposes?
A. No-but design may be a
solution to some industrial
problems.
Diagram by Charles Eames, accompanying the exhibit What is Design? Paris, 1969.
Q. What are the boundaries of
design?
A. What are the boundaries of
problems?

From: Eames Design, by John

Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart and Ray
Eames

What Is Design? Interview

The Eames design model is a variation of the common graphic known as a Venn diagram
full text
or set diagram. The images on the right illustrate the principle of additive color, where the
three primary colors red, green, and blue produce white light when combined together.

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IBM: many eyes About Many Eyes

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
Many Eyes is a bet on the power
of human visual intelligence to find
patterns. Our goal is to
"democratize" visualization and to
enable a new social kind of data
analysis. Jump right to our
visualizations now, take a tour, or
read on for a leisurely explanation
of the project.

Margin of victory in US presidential elections, 1908-2008

This scatterplot graph was created using the online tool at many eyes. Click on the link
above to go the interactive version. Each dot is a winning president.
Source: Dave Leipʼs Atlas of US presidential Elections. The plot was redrawn based on
the New York Times original publication: article, graphic. Data was collected in an Excel
spreadsheet to generate the percentage differences, then it was input into the many eyes
interface. The resulting graph was then redrawn in Illustrator and labels were added. Note
the decimal labeling of the popular vote percentages. In the redrawn version, these were
moved and changed slightly to indicate whole numbers.

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More information about US

presidential elections.
Election map. (NY Times)

Tabular data used for the scatterplot at left

(margin of victory in percentage points).

Winner pop.vote (%) Elec.College (%)

2008 Obama 7.27 35.6

2004 Bush 2.46 6.5
2000 Bush -0.51 1
1996 Clinton 8.51 40.8
1992 Clinton 5.56 37.6
1988 Bush 7.72 58.6
1984 Reagan 18.21 95.2
1980 Reagan 9.74 81.8
1976 Carter 2.06 10.6
1972 Nixon 23.15 93.5
1968 Nixon 0.7 20.4
1964 Johnson 22.58 80.6
1960 Kennedy 0.17 15.6
1956 Eisenhower 15.4 72.4
1952 Eisenhower 10.85 66.4
1948 Truman 4.48 21.5
1944 Roosevelt 7.5 62.8
1940 Roosevelt 9.96 69.2
1936 Roosevelt 24.26 97
1932 Roosevelt 17.76 77.8
1928 Hoover 17.41 67.2
1924 Coolidge 25.22 46.3
1920 Harding 26.17 52.2
Scatterplot redrawn in Illustrator. Note that horizontal and vertical axes are drawn based 1916 Wilson 3.12 4.4
on a general arbitrary proportion which nevertheless frames the data in a coherent way. 1912 Wilson 14.44 65.3
Note the negative value for the popular vote in Bushʼs winning election of 2000. 1908 Taft 8.53 33

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IBM: many eyes

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/ When to use a Word Tree

A word tree is a visual search

tool for unstructured text,
such as a book, article,
speech or poem. It lets you
pick a word or phrase and
shows you all the different
contexts in which it appears.
The contexts are arranged in
a tree-like branching structure
to reveal recurrent themes
and phrases.

How the word tree works

Unlike most of our

visualizations, the word tree
starts with a blank slate
instead of a full visualization
of the data. It's waiting for the
user to choose a search term.
Once a word or phrase is
typed, the computer then
finds all of the occurrences of
that term, along with the
A word tree using a portion of the text from the article About Information Design, phrases that appear after it.
by Sue Walker and Linda Reynolds. Click here to test the interactive version at
many eyes.

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Some definitions and articles Definitions of information

design
http://stcsig.org/id/
id_definitions.htm
Clark MacLeod
http://www.kelake.org/articles/id/definition.html
The Information Design
Design Council Special Interest Group of STC
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/ (Society for Technical
Communication) addresses
International Institute for Information Design (IIID) application of design
http://www.iiid.net principles to translating
complex, unorganized, or
Hugh Dubberly
unstructured data into
http://www.dubberly.com/articles
valuable, meaningful
Nathan Shedroff information.
http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/2.html
The practice of information
Wikipedia design requires an
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_design interdisciplinary approach
combining skills in areas
including graphic design,
writing and editing,
instructional design, human
performance technology, and
human factors.

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Historical examples: 1
Source: Friendly, M. & Denis, D. J.
(2001). Milestones in the History

Oresme c. 1323-1382 of Thematic Cartography,

Statistical Graphics, and Data
Visualization
http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/
Gallery/milestone/

acceleration

speed
Nicole Oresme, (c. 1323 - 1382)
2
was one of the most famous and
influential philosophers of the later
Middle Ages.
Fig. 2
time 1. Tractatus de
configurationibus
2. Graph used to
prove Merton's
Oresme invented a type of coordinate
theorem.
geometry before Descartes, finding the 3. Miniature of Nicole
First graph in history, c. 1350. Tractatus de logical equivalence between tabulating Oresmes Traité de
configurationibus qualitatum et motuum is available values and graphing them in De lʼespere, Bibliothèque
in Nicolas Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of configurationibus qualitatum et motuum. Nationale, Paris,
France, fonds
Qualities and Motions, ed. and trans. with an He proposed the use of a graph for plotting français 565, fol. 1r.
introduction and commentary by Marshall Clagett a variable magnitude whose value depends
(1968) on another variable. 3

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Oresme c. 1323-1382 It is possible that Descartes

= area = distance travelled
was influenced by Oresme's
work since it was reprinted
several times over the 100
years following its first
publication. Oresme was the
first to prove Merton's

= theorem, namely that the

distance travelled in a fixed
time by a body moving
under uniform acceleration
is the same as if the body
moved at a uniform speed
acceleration equal to its speed at the
midpoint of the time period.

http://www-history.mcs.st-
constant speed and.ac.uk/Biographies/
Oresme.html
acceleration

speed

time

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Apianus 1495-1552

2 Petrus Apianus (April 16, 1495 –

April 21, 1552; also known as
Peter Apian) was a German
humanist, famous for his works in
mathematics, astronomy and
cartography.
1. Map of the world from
editions of Cosmographia
from 1544, drawn by
Gemma Frisius. Shows
equator and tropic lines.
2. Frontispiece of
Cosmographia.
Illustration from Apianusʼ 1546 edition of Cosmographia. The city 3. The shape of the Earth
of Prague at the intersection of the 50th parallel and the 33rd can be inferred directly
meridian. The current coordinates are latitude: 50°05′North - from the shape of the
Logitude 14°25′East. The prime meridian of Greenwich was shadow it throws on the
moon during an eclipse.
established in 1884, thus the longitude discrepancy. 4. Petrus Apianus as
pictured in his
See: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, p. 22. 4 Folium Populi, 1533
3

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Descartes 1596-1650 1 René Descartes was a French

philosopher whose work, La
géométrie, includes his application
of algebra to geometry from which
we now have Cartesian geometry.
His work had a great influence on
both mathematicians and
philosophers.

Rene Descartes created analytic

geometry, and discovered an early
form of the law of conservation of
momentum (the term momentum
refers to the momentum of a
force). He outlined his views on
the universe in his Principles of
Philosophy.

Cartesian coordinate system

1. Discourse on
Method, 1637.
2. Portrait of René
Descartes
by Frans Hals ,
Musée du Louvre,
Paris.
Euclidʼs definition of a circle: Cartesian coordinate system with the circle of radius 2
A circle is a plane figure contained centered at the origin marked in red. The equation of the 2
by one line [i.e., curve] such that all circle is x2 + y2 = 22 or x2 + y2 = r2
straight lines falling upon it from
one point amongst those lying Descartesʼ definition of a circle: More info:
A circle is all x and y satisfying x2 + y2 = r2 Euclidʼs Window by Leonard Mlodinov
within the circle – called the center
– are equal to one another. for some constant number r.

From Euclidʼs Elements (300 BC) Compare Euclidʼs and Descartesʼ definitions.

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Numerical data and graphical The fact that classes of curves can be
defined by an equation has far-
reaching consequences in science.

presentation Temperature averages for the 15th of

each month (except January): New
York

Tabular data used for

the scatterplot at left

Day Average high (F°)

2/15 40
3/15 50
4/15 62
temperature 5/15 72
6/15 81
7/15 85 High
8/15 83
9/15 78
10/15 66
11/15 56
12/15 40

15th of each month

Law of average highs:

y = number of degrees
less than 85

x = number of months
away from July 15

y = 2x2

October high = 85 – y
85–(2x3x3 = 18)
85–18=63

Cartesian equation of a parabola: From: Euclidʼs Window by Leonard

y = ax2 + bx + c http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Java/Parabola.html Mlodinov, p. 84.

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Numerical data and graphical presentation Conic sections

Parabola

Examples of parabola

Satellite dish

Weather graph from The New York Times, http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/

January 11, 1981, p.32. excellence.html

Note how averages for the months of Also: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
January and February are the same and by Edward Tufte, p. 30. Suspension bridge cable
therefore had been left out of the original
parabolic function (previous slide).

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Edmond Halley 1656-1742 Photo: James Balog

Of the thousands of known

comets in the solar system,
Halley's comet is one of some 200
that are periodic. Halley's comet
orbits Earth every 76 years; the
next flyby will occur in 2061.

First known weather map,

showing prevailing winds on a
geographical map of the Earth. Edmond Halley (8 November 1656
Halley wrote: – 14 January 1742) was an
“... the sharp end of each little English astronomer, geophysicist,
stroke pointing out the part of the mathematician, meteorologist, and
Horizon, from whence the winds physicist, who is best known for
continually comes...” computing the orbit of Halley's
comet, which is named for him.
Maps from: Edmond Halley as a Thematic
Geo-Cartographer Author(s): Norman J.
W. Thrower Source: Annals of the
Association of American Geographers,
Vol. 59, No. 4 (Dec., 1969), pp. 652-676
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on
behalf of the Association of American
Geographers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/
2561832 Accessed: 03/08/2009 19:07

Also in Tufte, p.23

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John Snow 1813-1858 Use of a dot map to display
epidemiological data, leads
to discovery of the source
of a cholera epidemic.
Dr. John Snow's map
(1855) of deaths from
cholera in the Broad Street
area of London in
September 1854.
Broad Street pump
Each dot in the map represents one death from cholera. The crosses locate the water pumps.
“... On September 8, at Snow's urgent request, the handle of the Broad Street pump was removed
and the incidence of new cases in the area ceased almost at once...”
15
Pioneer Maps of Health and Disease in
England Author(s): E. W. Gilbert
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol.
124, No. 2 (Jun., 1958), pp. 172-183
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on
behalf of The Royal Geographical Society
(with the Institute of British Geographers)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/
1790244
Accessed: 03/08/2009 19:39
Also in Tufte, p.24
John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16
June 1858) was a British
physician and a leader in the
adoption of anaesthesia and
medical hygiene. He is considered
to be one of the fathers of
epidemiology, because of his work
in tracing the source of a cholera
outbreak in Soho, England, in
1854.
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Charles Joseph Minard 1781-1870

Minard's flow map graphic of Napoleon's March on Moscow (called

“the best graphic ever produced” by Tufte).
The “thickness” of the line indicates the size of the army (from Charles Joseph Minard (27 March
442,000 in 1812 to 10,000 in 1813. See Tufte, p.40 1781 – 24 October 1870 in
Bordeaux) was a French civil
http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/re-minard.html engineer noted for his inventions
in the field of information graphics.

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Charles Joseph Minard 1781-1870

Charles Joseph Minard (27 March
1781 – 24 October 1870 in
Bordeaux) was a French civil
engineer noted for his inventions in
the field of information graphics.

“This map charts the numbers and

destinations of emigrants from
Europe, Africa, China, and South
Asia for the year 1858. Minard
correlates the thickness of each line
with the number of emigrants it
represents, with one millimeter
equalling 1,500 people. He also
overlays the exact number of
emigrants (in thousands) over the
lines themselves."

http://cartographia.wordpress.com/
category/charles-joseph-minard/

Translation of the title of the chart:

Rough and Figurative Map representative of the year 1858 Original work. M. (Ch. Jos.) Minard,
The Emigrants of the World Des tableaux graphiques et des
The countries from where they depart and the ones where they arrive, drawn by Mr. Minard, Inspector General of cartesfiguratives, Paris, E. Thunot et
Bridges and Roads in retirement, principally from the public records in “European Emigration” by Mr. A. Legoyt and
the Merchantʼs Magazine of New York. Cie, 1862.
Paris, 26 September 1862

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William Playfair 1759-1823

Britain

William Playfair (Sept 22, 1759 –

A chart from Playfairʼs The Statistical Breviary (1801). In it, circles represent the area of Feb 11, 1823) was a Scottish
each country; the line on the left, the population in millions read on the vertical scales; engineer and political economist,
the line on the right, the revenue (taxes) collected in millions of pounds sterling read who is considered the founder of
also on the vertical scale. The dotted lines connecting the two vertical lines gives an graphical methods of statistics.
indication of the tax “burden” of each country.
William Playfair invented four
See complete description in Tufte, p.44.
types of diagrams: in 1786 the line
Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary (Hardcover) graph and bar chart of economic
data, and in 1801 the pie chart
and circle graph, used to show
part-whole relations.

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William Playfair 1759-1823

kings and queens

price of wheat

William Playfairʼs
1805 pie chart
showing the areas of
states in the USA.
Little Rhodyʼs slice is
wages hardly visible; the
Louisiana and
Western Territories
loom large.

This Playfair chart plots three parallel time series: prices of wheat, cost of labor (wages), and the
reigns of British kings and queens from 1565 to 1821. The chart points out the present (1821)
cheap coast of wheat compared with the past three centuries.
See complete description in Tufte, p.34.

1 2 1. First known bar cart.

Import and export to and
from Scotland in 1781 for 17
countries. Tufte, p.33.
2. Englandʼs exports and
imports to and from
Denmark and Norway from
1700 to 1780, showing the
balance against (red) and in
favor (yellow). Tufte, p.92.

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Johann Heinrich Lambert 1728-1777 In a paper Essai d'hygrometrie ou sur la

mesure de l'humiditeʼ(22) he used the
technique of graphical differentiation.
Hence in Figure 3 there is a plot
(Lambert's Figure 4) of the decrease in
the height of water in a capillary tube
(curve DEF) over a period of time during
which the temperature (curve ABC) also
varies. From these graphs Lambert
determined graphically the rate of
evaporation as a function of
temperature. To do this, he constructed
the tangent to DEF at various points (for
(ABC) temperature example, the tangent EG at E). The
slope of this tangent then indicates the
rate of evaporation at the corresponding
(DEF) height of temperature (H, in the case of E).
water column Plotting these tangents against the
temperature itself gives Lambert's
Figure 5.
re

time (Tilling, p.201-203)

t
tu
igh
ra
he
pe
m
te

tangent drawn through E

determines rate of evaporation
at a given temperature (H): Johann Heinrich Lambert (August
hight/time (cm/hours?) 26, 1728 – September 25, 1777),
was a Swiss mathematician,
physicist and astronomer.

Graphs reprinted in:

Early Experimental Graphs
Author(s): Laura Tilling
Source: The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Nov., 1975), pp. 193-213
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The British Society for the History of Science
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4025556
Accessed: 04/08/2009 02:18 (labels in red added)

Also in Tufte, p.45-46

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Graphical design by the early 1800s and later.

“Thus, by the early 1800s, graphical design was at

last no longer dependent on direct analogy of the
physical world – thanks to the work of Lambert and
Playfair. This meant, quite simply but quite
profoundly, that any variable quantity could be
placed in relationship to any other variable quantity,
measured for the same unit of observation. Data
graphics, because they were relational and not tied
to geographic or time coordinates, became relevant
to all quantitative inquiry. Indeed, in modern scientific
literature, about 40 percent of published graphics
have a relational form, with two or more variables
(none of which are latitude, longitude, or time).

This is no accident, since the relational graphic – in

its barest form, the scatterplot and its variants – is
the greatest of all graphical designs. It links at least
two variables, encouraging and even imploring the
viewer to assess the possible causal relationship
between the plotted variables. It confronts causal
theories that X causes Y with empirical evidence as
to the actual relationship between X and Y, as in the
case of the relationship between lung cancer and
smoking.

Scatterplot image from:

Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General.
Smoking and Health (Washington. D.C., 1964), p. 176; based
on R. Doll, “Etiology of Lung Cancer,” Advances in Cancer
Research, 3 (1955). 1-50.

From The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Tufte, p.46-47.

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Graphical train schedule – Paris-Lyon, 1885

The intersection of
two lines locates the time and
place that trains going in opposite
direction pass each other.
8 am 11am
Paris
Graphic representation of a
train schedule showing rate of
travel along the route from
Paris to Lyon. (The method is
attributed to the French
engineer Ibry)- Etienne-Jules
Marey (1830-1904), France.

A horizontal line
indicates length
of train stop
at a station.

Lyon
10:50am 10:10pm

3 hours 9 hours

The cities between Paris and Lyon are spaced proportionally according to the distance E.J. Marey, La Méthode Graphique
between them. Arrival and departures are located along the horizontal. The slope of the lines (Paris, 1885). p. 20.
reflect the speed of the train: the more vertical the line, the faster the train. Compare an
From The Visual Display of
express train which took 9 hours to complete the trip in 1885 (black line) with a TGV (train à Quantitative Information Tufte, p.31.
grand vitesse) which took 3 hours in 1981 (blue line).

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A scatterplot with chronologically connected data points generates an

unusual time-line where the movement of the line simultaneously
indicates the trend of two variables: consumption and price.

This New York Times graph shows the relationship between oil consumption and average price
from 1964 to 2007. In the mid-eighties, prices as well as consumption fell and the line appears to
move backwards. See the interactive version here.

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A stacked graph showing how people in the US spent

their time in 2008. NY Times.

How Different Groups Spend Their

Day (The unemployed)

How Different Groups Spend Their Day (The employed)

The American Time Use Survey asks thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a
day. Here is how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008. Related article.
See the interactive version here.

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Circos - an information aesthetic for comparative website

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/circos/
genomics NY Times article
NY times graphic

NY Times interactive (presidential

candidates) using Circos

"Circos can be applied to draw any kind

of data, not just from the field of
genomics. Since I work in genomics,
I've been using Circos to draw the kind
of data I work with. Circos is ideally
suited when your data represents
relationships between positions on one
or more scales.

You can turn tabular data into Circos

images using the online version of
Circos. Transform boring tables into
informative and visually compelling
datagraphics."

M. Krzywinski
Circos: An information aesthetic for
comparative genomics

online applet
http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/circos/
tableviewer/

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Links
Talk to the Newsroom: Graphics Director Steve Duenes
The New York Times, February 25, 2008
New York Times Graphics Team article (PDF)
Link to article (some broken links in the original article have been fixed in the PDF above)

The article describes some of the best graphics produced by the NY times. All the
graphics are linked in the PDF. Print the PDF to read the article and use links in
thePDF to see the graphics. A summary of all the links is given at the end of the
PDF, if you want to go directly to the graphics. Many of the graphics are
interactive. Here are a few examples from the article:

Super Bowl Advertising

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/01/30/business/20080131_SUPERBOWLADS_GRAPHIC.html

Movies Box Office Receipts 1986-2008

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/20080223_REVENUE_GRAPHIC.html

Barry Bonds Home Run Record

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/sports/20070731_BONDS_GRAPHIC.html

Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design

by Paul Mijksenaar
Chapters (PDF)
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~trogu/523/fall2009/pdf/visualfunction/
Download and read the chapters from the book.

You can also buy the book at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Function-Introduction-Information-Design/
dp/156898118X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

SFSU – Trogu – Fall 2009