Over time our ideas evolve and change shape. When a user is first introduced to new graphics or conceptual maps they will need an onboarding phase to follow the new patterns. But we do have some common core templates and tropes that can be used as bases depending on shared experiences
An example of auditory and visual linked ideas, is the bouba kiki experiment. Where most people name the soft blob 'Bouba' and the spiky blob 'Kiki'. This example seems to transcend culture.
Where as arbitrary links like 'major music key is happy' and 'minor music key is sad', seems to differ across the world.
In the late 19th century, artist were exposed to new styles from other countries. An interesting interaction was when Japan was reopened to the west.
Artists in France, started to get more loose and playful with the impressionist movement. Artists in Japan, started pushing striking perspective and subject hierarchy.
As humans have been exposed more and more to visual cues. Our abilities to interpret and distinguish have sharped.
Logos and affordances use to be more skeuomorphic, when designers had to teach people how to view them.
Now our culture is so saturated with advertisements and visual prompts, that attention is very competitive. Design is now focused on efficiency, and quick recognition.
A story is stronger when there is a clear focus. If too many objects are competing for attention then they all have a weak presence. In this example below, I show a dark value story with the moon focus. And a light value story, with the flower focus. But if you tried to have everything all at one, it would weaken the focus.
Better to pick one, if you need more than that I would experiment with paneling so that each panel has a main focus subject.
Von Restorff effect: Also known as perceptual salience, referring to what information is able to capture attention. This is when hierarchy is useful, so that important ideas don't have to compete with background details.
How something is framed affects what people focus on and remember. With the long shot, you can see rhythms of how the animals are laid out and where the gaps are. With the close-up, you can empathize with characters in the scene better. Feel the moment with them vs observing them all reacting to the moment as an outsider.
Both of these strategies have their strengths. if you need the audience to have a strong connection with the subject. Using close-up strategy with high contrast would help build empathy. If you don't know where the focus should be or need a more holistic perspective. Zooming out can help with exploration and pattern finding.
Stories are our most powerful tool to communicate ideas. Visual channels are our most potent sensory input and processing. This is why data visualization is such a powerful medium.
While visualization usually invokes ideas about sight and visuals. You can also express data relationships through audio and tactile.
Charles Minard and Florence Nightingale were very good at evoking emotional impacts through graphic design. Both of these graphs encode increasing death in shape size. This was back when data was presented as very tedious tables of numbers. These graphs tell stories that humanize the meaning of those numbers.
The structure of these graphs were enforced by strong design gestalt that helped focus the attention on the flow of the numbers. and the visual aesthetic helps keep the audience engaged.
There is a lot of power in science and statistics. One bad habit of misinformation is leeching of the reputation of well thought out graphic design by stilling the aesthetic. This is used a lot in scams and manipulative advertising.
For example, the newspaper clipping is using clipart of graphs to associate the idea of statistics with their narrative. This is also used when people use 'scientific' sounding words like 'quantum' to add validity to their arguments.
One of the biggest hazard in data design is too many ideas. Trying to make a graph of all the ideas you want to connect, and end up saying nothing.
In film and comic books,
The strategy is focus on telling one story well, rather than many stories bad. Build a narrative that helps communicate with the audience. Pace the information, so it is not too confusing or too boring.
An interesting relationship in stories is emotional tension and the binary good/bad status of the story. A balance of high energy and rest build up the tension. Story beats with waxing and waning tension keep the audience engaged. If this relationship is monotonous the story feels boring and unchanging.
Here is a mini experiment comparing the story tension and pacing of 'Uncharted 2' and 'Uncharted 3' from Naughty Dog. Comparing how tension intensity correlates to status changes.
I encoded meaning into the value of the bars, dark is high tension and light is low tension. I encoded positive/negative story status into the white line. On the second bar, I also encoded the chapters by lifting the first story bar above the graph.
Sometime to get the drama of a warm/cool color scheme, designers use orange/blue to facilitate color blindness accessibility. In the first bar I used a classic red/green relationship. and in the second bar I augmented it to more pinky/minty. I wanted to emphasize the encoded value over encoded color.
DNA is a nucleic acid that you can not see or hear. So, to communicate ideas about this concept we must abstract it into tangible outputs that humans can engage with. Some abstractions can cross sensory input channels.
For example, using a written script of the English language, DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid has visual symbols (the letters) tied to the concept. These symbols are also tied to audio inputs (dēˌenˈā) and (dēˌäksēˌrībōno͞oˈklēik ˈasid). This uses language as an audio/visual communication medium, where as mediums like American Sign Language or symbols are specialized to visual channels.
Another example, the spaced filled and chemical models can exist as both a visual medium (as below) and a tactile medium (when built as 3D models).
Abstraction comes on a multi-axis spectrum.
You can push for high metaphor and symbolism. For example, liking DNA to a cookbook to tie functionality to a relatable human practice.
Or you can push more for high reduction and shape abstraction. Like an artist pushing the visual rhythm of DNA to swirling helix's observed in the galaxy or in nature, putting emphasis on how DNA feels to observe.
Or push for more hyperrealism. This is tricky because reality can be relative to how you observe the universe. For example, the photo of DNA captured might be the most literal. But if the space filled model, that is more abstracted, better connects the audience to the subject it might feel more real because the meaning is more intimately connected to the user.
The visual processing skills needed to read are very cognitive taxing. This can get in the way when reading is the means to accomplish another task. Human factor engineering principles can be used to reduce cognitive load and human failure.
As tech has dramatically evolved over the decades EHRs have fell behind. So much info is crammed into the window that it is very difficult to process.
Many people want to fix this problem but we are not there yet. For the example below, the abdominal image takes the top of the hierarchy, then the notes, then quantitative data. This design has clear UI but the hierarchy highlights information in reversed order of importance. It is really appealing to put images at the top of the hierarchy. But in this example it waste space saying nothing because clinicians don't need beginner anatomy diagrams
In this comparison, of a Yahoo homepage from Japan and US, you can see the different hierarchy ratios used in different countries. In the US, Web pages have been pushing really high contrast and lowering the density. Whereas web pages in Japan has keep to the high density low contrast ratio.
This trend to low density layout is seen in many countries. As people adjust to using low density and high contrast, it becomes harder to go back to older designs. Because it is much easier for the brain to absorb info, as UX and UI grow to support visual processing.
Newspapers use to be very dense and tedious to read. Part of the job of newsies boys was to find stories in that 'word soup' worth buying a paper, and that is what they advertised in the streets.
Now papers are displayed by the cover and the design sells it. The hierarchy usually starts with the brand, then really intriguing headlines and quotes accompanied by images. With the attention competition of the internet, you would not be able to sell an idea with the high density of old styles.
