Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization

CHAPTER 16Bringing Everything Together

We return to our restaurant scene with this chapter, spoons ready for dessert. To truly transport us, we're diving into a delightful bowl of Indonesian black rice pudding, such as the one shown in Figure 16.1. Warm, soft rice swirled with the heady delights of coconut milk awaits. We take a bite. It's lightly sweet and slightly chewy with the faintest trace of salt. The richness of the coconut milk provides weight without overwhelming or coating the tongue: it is both heavy and light simultaneously. The flavors of black rice and coconut gently fade as we take our last bite.

Like our dessert, functional aesthetics relies on the interplay of ideas that blend distinct flavors to create a unique but cohesive experience. When we take these ideas, we not only move from a pictographic mode to a perceptual one, we also move to a paradigm that allows us to support all consumers by including semantics and intent. As we see in Figure 16.2, semantic practice blurs the lines and explores what draws meaning while intent looks beyond the literal sum of the parts to the hidden goals that drive analytical work and supports the whole paradigm.

Throughout this book, we've left breadcrumbs in the form of triangles. This book blends research, practice, and theory to create a culinary journey of ideas. These triangles add spice to build better, more impactful visualizations that guide a wider array of consumers through analytical conversations. This is ...