#robert kosara

"In the 1970s, it was the protest songs. In the 1980s, it was the anti-war movies. Today, the protest is no longer happening in songs or movies. Today, it’s online, based on data, and using visualization.

How do you make people notice an issue? How do you get them to care? What if we’re no longer moved by songs (and the artists too comfy and reluctant to take sides) and no longer want to see movies about real issues (and Hollywood won’t take the risk of offending anybody)?

"The following are three minimal criteria that any visualization has to fulfill to be considered a pragmatic visualization. A good visualization certainly has to do more, but these criteria are useful to draw the line between a lot of things that are often called visualization and what we consider visualization in this field.

Based on (non-visual) data. A visualization’s purpose is the communication of data. That means that the data must come from something that is abstract or at least not immediately visible (like the inside of the human body). This rules out photography and image processing. Visualization transforms from the invisible to the visible.

Produce an image. It may seem obvious that a visualization has to produce an image, but that is not always so clear. Also, the visual must be the primary means of communication, other modalities can only provide additional information. If the image is only a small part of the process, it is not visualization.