Reading Response #2

Although much of these two readings seemed  to be rather ‘obvious’, I think they outlined very clearly what an information designer’s primary concerns should be – things that are very easy to lose sight of when trying to bend Processing or AS3 to your will in order to the make the most striking data viz.  I particularly appreciated the portion about ‘preattentive variables’ – once again, the ideas were not surprising or new, but it was helpful seeing them quantified in such striking examples.  Variations in color and size seem to be the most popular way to categorize data in most visualizations – the graphic was a reminder that other options exist as well.  This was  also true for the Patterns section in the Tidwell reading – I was reminded of underused visualization approaches (such as tree tables) and introduced to entirely new ones (data brushing).  The Communicating Numbers whitepaper in particular made me re-evaluate past projects of mine and understand more fully why they worked, didn’t work, or could have been better.  These readings may not have been particularly exciting or novel, but I’m sure I’ll be referring back to them regularly.