3.26 Perception/decoding: Preattentive search & patterns
- What “pops” (Healy 2018, Ch. 1.3.2)
- Inspect and discuss Figure 1.18.
- Some contrasts (color, size, angle) easier to see than others (See Figure 1.16)
- Consequences: Multiple mappings/channels (size, angle, elongation, movement) may overtax the viewer’s capacity (See Figure 1.19)
- Think carefully before representing different variables and their values by shape, color etc.
- Gestalt rules (Healy 2018, Ch. 1.3.3)
- Humans generally want to identify groupings/classifications/entities than can be treated as the same thing
- Proximity: Things that are spatially near to one another seem to be related.
- Similarity: Things that look alike seem to be related.
- Connection: Things that are visually tied to one another seem to be related.
- Continuity: Partially hidden objects are completed into familiar shapes.
- Closure: Incomplete shapes are perceived as complete.
- Figure and Ground: Visual elements are taken to be either in the foreground or the background.
- Common Fate: Elements sharing a direction of movement are perceived as a unit.
- Inspect and discuss Figure 1.20 and 1.21
- Keep those in mind when we interpret graphs ourselves.
- Humans generally want to identify groupings/classifications/entities than can be treated as the same thing
References
Healy, Kieran. 2018. Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction. Princeton University Press.