The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization

9. The Rise of Interactive Graphics

What makes something simple or complex? It’s not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has: It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates.

—Donald A. Norman, from Living With Complexity

In the summer of 1996, Don Wittekind, a visual journalist who picked up some programming skills in a technical position at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, got a phone call from Leavett Biles, the graphics director at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, one of the major newspapers in the state. Biles was spearheading a major transformation in the newsroom, which involved the production of more video, audio, and motion graphics content.

He told Wittekind, “I know about ...