Comments on: Data Scienist > Data Geek > Designer

By: Mile Wide… Inch Deep… » Data Scienist > Data Geek > Designer « Visualizing Economics

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:16:15 +0000

[...] Catherine Mulbrandon took Ben Fry’s 7 steps of data the Data Scientest steps (from his PhD dissertation (page 30 etc), dated 1997 and reiterated in his Visualizing Data book, as he describes on his website) and graphed her own ability levels in each area. [...]

By: David Locke

David Locke — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:24:01 +0000

So we have another land grab by designers. One of these days, non-designers should be preemptive about the land grabs. A land grab by designers wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t deliberately exclude all others from the space. I suppose it keeps designers employed and rates high to ensure that only they can do InfoVis, IA, etc. Of course, collaboration across disciplines is very difficult. Such collaborations are made much harder by the insistence that only this way or that way works, and the assertion of hierarchy and disqualification.

All phases test. The tests will differ.

By: Noah Iliinsky

Noah Iliinsky — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:48:46 +0000

An excellent point.

I wrote a master’s thesis that is specifically focused on what it takes to do steps 5 and 6 well. This includes what you have to know about your user’s context (language, industry convention, etc.), as well as how the human brain deals with factors such as information density and relative and absolute placement.

The thesis is available at http://tinyurl.com/diagramthesis

In terms of your diagram, I’m curious why you chose a cyclical format (implying the cycle repeats?), and why steps 5, 6, and 7 are further from the origin (implying something?).

Best, Noah

By: Benjamin Wiederkehr

Benjamin Wiederkehr — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:27:31 +0000

Great diagram, Catherine. As an Interaction Designer myself I totally agree with you about the importance of user-testing. There's one thing I would alter though: The order of 5.represent, 6.refine, 7.interact excludes the possibility to refine the visualization based on the interaction model. I've written my thoughts in more detail on datavisualization.ch — would love to hear your feedback.

By: Data Scientist » Data Geek » Data Designer on Datavisualization.ch

Data Scientist » Data Geek » Data Designer on Datavisualization.ch — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:25:14 +0000

[...] from visualizingeconomics.com has written an interesting article about the roles in data visualization. The posts that your reading right now are my thoughts about [...]

By: Data Scienist > Data Geek > Designer « Visualizing Economics | designgraphics

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:34:16 +0000

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