I’ve been designing some new visualizations recently, and reading around the InfoVis literature for examples to analyse and best practices to follow. I’ve found myself returning again and again to a diagram in MacKinlay’s 1986 paper and various papers which follow it. So much so that I’ve reworked a version of the diagram and pinned it to the wall behind my desk for quick reference:
It shows a theoretical model for accuracy when performing reasoning tasks with an image. The model was developed empirically but for some comparisons and some analytical tasks experimentation has backed it up. I find it a handy thing to have when working out how visualizations and infographics are put together. And when I have some data that I’m designing an representation for, it helps me choose what visual variables to use.
