Visualizing Data

Preface

When I show visualization projects to an audience, one of the most common questions is, “How do you do this?” Other books about data visualization do exist, but the most prominent ones are often collections of academic papers; in any case, few explain how to actually build representations. Books from the field of design that offer advice for creating visualizations see the field only in terms of static displays, ignoring the possibility of dynamic, software-based visualizations. A number spend most of their time dissecting what’s wrong with given representations—sometimes providing solutions, but more often not.

In this book, I wanted to offer something for people who want to get started building their own visualizations, something to use as a jumping-off point for more complicated work. I don’t cover everything, but I’ve tried to provide enough background so that you’ll know where to go next.

I wrote this book because I wanted to have a way to make the ideas from Computational Information Design, my Ph.D. dissertation, more accessible to a wider audience. More specifically, I wanted to see these ideas actually applied, rather than limited to an academic document on a shelf. My dissertation covered the process of getting from data to understanding; in other words, from considering a pile of information to presenting it usefully, in a way that can be easily understood and interacted with. This process is covered in Chapter 1, and used throughout the book as a framework for ...