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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Learn how expert data visualization designers reason about their craft In The Art of Insight: How Great Visualization Designers Think, renowned visualization designer and educator Alberto Cairo, in conversation with several leaders in the field, delivers an inspiring exploration of how they make design choices. The book is a celebration of visualization, and a personal journey that dives into subjects like: * How the professional background and life experiences of every designer shape their choices of what to visualize and how to visualize it. * What designers from different countries and cultures, and working in different fields, such as data art, data analytics, or data journalism, have in common, or how they differ from each other. * How designers reflect on research, ethical reasoning, and also aesthetic judgments, to make decisions such as selecting the most appropriate ways to encode data, or the most appealing visual style. Perfect for data scientists and data journalists, The Art of Insight will also inspire artists, analysts, statisticians, and any other professional who uses data visualizations.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Praise for
The Art of Insight
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
A Note on Typography
Introduction
PART I: Pragmatists
Chapter 1: Unruly Stripes
Note
Chapter 2: A World of Conversation
Note
PART II: Eccentrics
Chapter 3: The Eternal Wanderer
Chapter 4: A Certain Inner Light
Chapter 5: A Mindful Artisan
Chapter 6: Living Visualization
Chapter 7: Data and Persons
Chapter 8: Souls before Numbers
Coda
PART III: Ambassadors
Chapter 9: Building Bridges
Chapter 10: The Good Fighter
Chapter 11: Making Data Friendly
Chapter 12: A Reporter among Engineers
Chapter 13: The Therapy of Visualization
Chapter 14: The Public Intellectual
Chapter 15: The Discerning Outsider
Second Coda
PART IV: Narrators
Chapter 16: A Journalism of Care
Chapter 17: No Treasure Hunts
Chapter 18: Smart Brevity
Chapter 19: Visceral Visualizations
Chapter 20: The Determined Learner
Chapter 21: The Jack‐of‐All‐Trades
Chapter 22: A Journalist at War
Epilogue: Teachers, Mentors, and Meaning
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1 “
wonder
&
hope
” Tuan Huang /
Figure I.2 “
wonder
&
hope
” March and April of 2018
Figure I.3 “
wonder
&
hope
” May of 2019 and February of 2020
Figure I.4 Photograph by Tuan Huang
Figure I.5 “
wonder
&
hope
” March of 2022
Figure I.6 Photographs by Tuan Huang
Figure I.7 Photograph by Tuan Huang
Figure I.8 “An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton”
Figure I.9 “Legends”
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Ellie Highwood's global warming blanket
Figure 1.2 Temperature anomalies year (NOAA)
Figure 1.3 Animated climate spiral by Ed Hawkins
Figure 1.4 “Warming Stripes”
Figure 1.5 The “hockey stick chart” by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, ...
Figure 1.6 Nicola Davies and Ed Hawkins presenting at the Hay Festival of Li...
Figure 1.7 Mark Hanson's car
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 “Snake Oil Supplements? Scientific evidence for popular health su...
Figure 2.2 The NHC's Track Forecast Cone
Figure 2.3 “The Gyllenhaal Experiment”
Figure 2.4 “Someone clever once said women were not allowed pockets”
Figure 2.5 “How Diverse Are US Newsrooms?”
Figure 2.6 All steps in the reverse‐engineering exercise
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 “Eccentrics”
Figure 3.2 Two frames of the animated version of “Eccentrics”
Figure 3.3 Two frames of the animated version of “Eccentrics”
Figure 3.4 Map of Rwanda
Figure 3.5 “The southern right whale”
Figure 3.6 Draft and early notes for “The southern right whale” infographic...
Figure 3.7 “A Daily Coffee”
Figure 3.8 “The Sex Life of a Stable Couple”
Figure 3.9 “To an Old Friend”
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 “Why Do Cats and Dogs?”
Figure 4.2 Early sketch for “Why Do Cats and Dogs?”
Figure 4.3 “The Words of
The Lord of the Rings
.” Data Sketches
Figure 4.4 “Adore You”
Figure 4.5 “Elemental Flows”
Figure 4.6 “Elemental Flows: Digital”
Figure 4.7 “Patchwork Kingdoms”
Figure 4.8 Sketch for “Patchwork Kingdoms”
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 “Weather Eindhoven 2014”
Figure 5.2 One of the pages of “The Bayreuther Festival, 2017”
Figure 5.3 “The Hotel New Hampshire”
Figure 5.4 “A View on Despair”
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 “Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration”
Figure 6.2 Legend of “Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration”
Figure 6.3 “Visualizing Empires Decline”
Figure 6.4 Blood vessels cartogram
Figure 6.5 “The Ecosystem of Corporate Politicians”
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 “The Stories Behind a Line” by Federica Fragapane, in collaborati...
Figure 7.2 Scheme describing the creation of “Crime in Northern Italy”
Figure 7.3 “Crime in Northern Italy”
Figure 7.4 “Where is Piero?”
Figure 7.5 “Key workers: Migrants' contribution to the COVID‐19 response,” c...
Figure 7.6 “Hearts and minds,” co‐designed by Federica Fragapane and Alex Pi...
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 “The Unwelcomed”
Figure 8.2 Two images from “The Unwelcomed”
Figure 8.3 “The Two Poles of Egyptian Football”
Figure 8.4 “Horrified? Don’t Be...”
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 The #DuBoisChallenge has its origins in Anthony Starks' recreatio...
Figure 9.2 One of the charts from W.E.B. Du Bois's “American Negro Exhibit” ...
Figure 9.3 Visualizing NYC with W.E.B. Du Bois, class website
Figure 9.4 Two pages from W.E.B. Du Bois's
The Philadelphia Negro
Figure 9.5 Tables from Ida D. Wells's article “Lynching and the Excuse For I...
Figure 9.6 “Red Record of Lynching Map,” based on Ida B. Wells's data. It wa...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 “The Mental Mindgames of Measuring Milk”
Figure 10.2 Some graphics from “KAP COVID: Exploring Knowledge, Attitudes an...
Figure 10.3 Screenshots from “KAP COVID: Exploring Knowledge, Attitudesand P...
Figure 10.4 Graphics from “KAP COVID: Vaccine Acceptance Around the World”...
Figure 10.5 Examples of annotations from “KAP COVID: Exploring Knowledge, At...
Figure 10.6 Illustrations by Katherine Haugh for “How Is COVID‐19 Case Data ...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 “An Illustrated Guide to Data Literacy: Base Rate Fallacy”
Figure 11.2 “The Women of Data Viz: Who we are & what we want”
Figure 11.3 “Stressors on Honey Bee Colonies in the United States from April...
Figure 11.4 “How I've Spent My Time”
Figure 11.5 Illustrations for “Unfair Comparisons: How Visualizing Social In...
Figure 11.6 Sketches for “Unfair Comparisons: How Visualizing Social Inequal...
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 Opening images from “America is more diverse than ever – but sti...
Figure 12.2 Screenshots from “America is more diverse than ever – but still ...
Figure 12.3 Diversity map of Miami from “America is more diverse than ever –...
Figure 12.4 First chart from “The Fentanyl Failure” by Scott Higham, Sari Ho...
Figure 12.5 Cartogram from “The Fentanyl Failure”
Figure 12.6 Dot chart from “The Fentanyl Failure”
Figure 12.7 “Drilling into the DEA's pain pill database”
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1 “History of Philosophy,” early 2014 version
Figure 13.2 One of the first sketches for “History of Philosophy”
Figure 13.3 A screenshot from “History of Philosophy” centered on philosophe...
Figure 13.4 “Brain Issues”
Figure 13.5 “Vital Signs”
Figure 13.6 “Communicating Science”
Figure 13.7 A poster by University of Miami students and a quick makeover to...
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1 Screenshots from “Names and Spaces: Street Names of Budapest”...
Figure 14.2 “Democranesia” by Attila Bátorfy and Ziza Szopkó
Figure 14.3 “The Past Ten Years of Hungarian Media” by Krisztián Szabó and A...
Figure 14.4 Screenshots from “And the Earth Shakes – Earthquakes from 1900 t...
Figure 14.5 Ethnic and religious maps of Hungary by Pál Balogh and Kocsárd P...
Figure 14.6 Detail from the ethnic and religious maps of Hungary by Pál Balo...
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1 Graphs from “What's behind the rising migration numbers” by Hark...
Figure 15.2 Visa types for the Philippines from “What's behind the rising mi...
Figure 15.3 Visa types for India and China from “What's behind the rising mi...
Figure 15.4 Graphs from “The Decile Drift”
Figure 15.5 Graphs from “What's beneath rising NCEA pass rates?”
Figure 15.6 “How NCEA has evolved?”
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1 Illustrations from “How fat are the bears of fat bear week?” by ...
Figure 16.2 Illustrations from “Which birds are the biggest jerks at the fee...
Figure 16.3 Charts from “Millions in U.S. lose jobless benefits as federal a...
Figure 16.4 “What is causing inflation: The factors driving prices high each...
Figure 16.5 “The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 — 2008” by...
Figure 16.6 Screenshots from “Cut short” by Alyssa Fowers and Leslie Shapiro...
Figure 16.7 Charts from “Pandemic places pressure on transgender mental heal...
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1 “Workers' Comp Benefits: How Much is a Limb Worth?” by Lena Groe...
Figure 17.2 Early sketches for “Workers' Comp Benefits: How Much is a Limb W...
Figure 17.3 Charts from “Reopening America” by Lena V. Groeger and Ash Ngu...
Figure 17.4 “Dollars for Docs”
Figure 17.5 Charts from “What Coronavirus Job Losses Reveal About Racism in ...
Figure 17.6 Maps from “Lost Cause: Seeing America Through the Losing Candida...
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1 Screenshots from “Midterm elections 2022: The issues that matter...
Figure 18.2 Cartogram from “Midterm elections 2022: The issues that matter t...
Figure 18.3 First barcode plot sketch
Figure 18.4 “Internet Penetration Across China” by Jacque Schrag
Figure 18.5 “The generative art <‐‐> dataviz spectrum”
Figure 18.6 Graphics from “Coronavirus Variant Tracker”
Figure 18.7 Graphics from “Can one earthquake trigger another on the other s...
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 “Women are fading out from Bollywood music: An analysis of over ...
Figure 19.2 Searchable movie song database from “Women are fading out from B...
Figure 19.3 “The decade that changed Delhi” by Aparna Alluri and Gurman Bhat...
Figure 19.4 Map from “A window into Delhi's deadly pollution”
Figure 19.5 Data from “A window into Delhi's deadly pollution”
Figure 19.6 Photos from “A window into Delhi's deadly pollution”
Figure 19.7 Photos from “A window into Delhi's deadly pollution”
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1 “Stars of the screen” by Jane Pong /
South China Morning Post
...
Figure 20.2 “Emerging volatility in the Eurozone crisis”
Figure 20.3 “Rain patterns” by Jane Pong /
South China Morning Post
Figure 20.4 “Lighting up” by Jane Pong /
South China Morning Post
Figure 20.5 “How remittances flow around the world” by Jane Pong, Federica C...
Chapter 21
Figure 21.1 “Capivara Weather”
Figure 21.2 “Genealogy of Brazilian Parties”
Figure 21.3 Early sketches for “Genealogy of Brazilian Parties” made in Adob...
Figure 21.4 “Blue Whale VR,” personal renders
Figure 21.5 “Fiscal Maneuvers” by João Paulo Charleaux, Lilian Venturini, an...
Figure 21.6 “The ideology of Twitter influencers” by Daniel Mariani, Fábio T...
Chapter 22
Figure 22.1 “Under attack. What and when Russia shelled in Ukraine” by Petro...
Figure 22.2 “Dynamics of Russian disinformation topics” by Nadja Kelm and Na...
Figure 22.3 “Here's how Ukraine was swept by populism. History of voting sin...
Figure 22.4 “Who voted for the reforms?” by Anatoliy Bondarenko, Nadja Kelm,...
Figure 22.5 “Whiskey, chocolate, red caviar: What is most often stolen in AT...
Figure 22.6 “0007, Like a Bond, James Bond: Who buys fancy number plates 3,0...
Epilogue
Figure E.1 A map of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain and its neighbors in the...
Figure E.2 A diagram that I often use in classes and workshops. It lists som...
Guide
Cover Page
Praise for The Art of Insight
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Art of Insight
About the Author
A Note on Typography
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Epilogue: Teachers, Mentors, and Meaning
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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Praise for The Art of Insight
Data visualization books don't typically transport you to new worlds. Alberto Cairo's The Art of Insight delves into the lives of numerous designers and what has shaped them. Each chapter showcases stunning examples, but also life stories and the motivations that informed choices. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, but perhaps most importantly, I caught glimpses of myself and my own story. —Bridget Cogley, co‐author of Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization and chief visualization officer at Versalytix
Practitioners of data visualization and storytelling hope to get people to see, understand, and feel differently about data. The Art of Insight has me thinking differently about the field of data visualization and storytelling itself. Cairo's intimate and caring interviews and commentary are revealing, thought‐provoking, and most of all, inspiring. —Steve Wexler, professional chart looker‐atter and co‐author of The Big Book of Dashboards, and Author of The Big Picture
This book is a breath of fresh air following the exhaustion of the pandemic! Written in dialogue with numerous data artists, designers, and illustrators, Cairo has crafted a pragmatic, inspiring reflection on the process and purpose of contemporary data visualization. —Catherine D'Ignazio, associate professor and director of the Data + Feminism Lab, MIT, and co‐author of Data Feminism
In today's frenetic life, it's common to quickly consume, scan, and scroll, rarely giving a data graphic we encounter more than a few seconds of our time and attention. In The Art of Insight, Alberto Cairo slows down the pace for us and takes us on a much deeper dive into the rich narratives, human emotions, and profound motivations behind the data. The way he weaves his own illuminating thoughts and observations together with the words and stories of the creators themselves will leave you feeling both informed and inspired. This book is a much needed demonstration of the opposite of superficial critique, and the data visualization world will be better off for it. —Ben Jones, co‐founder and CEO of Data Literacy
The concept of “data visualization" means so many different things for many different people. With The Art of Insight, Alberto Cairo brings us along on his exploration of the new and different ways designers are visualizing our world. It's an uplifting journey to get a glimpse into the perspectives and processes of these creative data artists. —Randy Krum, visualization designer, author of Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design, and founder of InfoNewt
The world of data visualization is a beautiful mess, and we are lucky to have Alberto Cairo as such an experienced, empathetic and curious guide to show us around. Tying the seminal data visualization works covered in the book to intimate conversations on the biographies and thoughts of the creators behind them paints a rich and multi‐faceted portrait of this ever‐evolving field. This book allows us to see the world of data visualization through many different eyes, offering plenty of opportunities to find personal connections and inspiration to aspiring practitioners and seasoned professionals alike. Bravo! —Moritz Stefaner, independent data visualization expert at Truth & Beauty
I've been a fan of Alberto Cairo's work for years, and his new book, The Art of Insight, is a delightful addition to his body of work. I enjoyed his conversations with designers from around the world about their histories, their evolution as artists and artisans, and their insights about their work in visualization. Examples ranged from the humorous to the tragic. I'm grateful to Alberto for sharing his conversations with these brilliant visualization designers and for the inspiration for all of us who share the goal of creating visualizations that carry meaning to an audience. —A. John Bailer, Professor Emeritus of Statistics at Miami University, past president of the International Statistical Institute, podcast host of Stats+Stories, and author Statistics Behind the Headlines
This is a terrific idea for a book. It takes us directly into the minds of information designers. Alberto has wisely and generously given them a platform to describe—in their own words—how they work, and how their often quite personal data pieces led to real‐world visualizations. —Nigel Holmes, designer and author of Joyful Infographics: A Friendly, Human Approach to Data
Visualization stretches beyond reports and sterile charts to uses more tightly coupled with real life, which is full of beauty, complexity, and stories. With The Art of Insight, Alberto Cairo places the full field on display. Learn the design and analysis processes of those in less traditional visualization roles, alongside Alberto's unique perspective, and your own data work will benefit, wherever that may be. —Nathan Yau, statistician, FlowingData.com
The creative process can often seem like a black box, a mysterious contraption of levers to get to a final solution. In his latest book, Cairo unpacks this mysterious activity, unveiling the story behind incredible data visualization and information design pieces, and in the process, revealing the human behind the data. —Manuel Lima, author of The New Designer: Rejecting Myths, Embracing Change
The Art of Insight is an inspiring collection of tales of forms and shapes. Not the forms and shapes that make up beautiful art and visualisation but the journeys that formed and shaped the visualization artists behind them. In Cairo's book, visualization artists reflect on their diverse backgrounds, inspirational sources, and haphazard career paths. They share insights into their thought processes, their sources of inspiration, and both the little and big things in life that influence them. The book provides wonderful insights into the conscious and sometimes unconscious steps that preceded the artists' creations. By providing a lens into how these artists were formed, the reader is left feeling encouraged to embrace their own journey into visualization. —Claus Thorn Ekstrøm, professor of Biostatistics at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen
Another amazing book by Alberto Cairo. It presents a broad overview of contemporary visualization practices through a plurality of voices that are diverse and culturally rich. Conversations with key visualizers from around the globe are interwoven with insights and acuity from Cairo's deep and vast knowledge of the field. The book is a must for practitioners and students alike as we are introduced to a variety of approaches to representing data, including first‐hand experiences guided by the author's generous views. What a joy! —Isabel Meirelles, professor, OCAD University, and author of Design for Information
What a treat to get a glimpse into the thought processes and motivations of world‐class data visualization designers! It's hard to quantify the amount of inspiration to be drawn from the stories behind the powerful images in this book. The sheer variety of visualizations shown also serve as an important reminder of the huge array of purposes that data visualization can serve. Many chart creators (including myself) fall into the trap of thinking of “charts” as just being of the particular type that they tend to design (data art, business reporting, infographics, etc.). Seeing so many effective visualizations serving so many different purposes is an instant cure for this myopic view. —Nick Desbarats, educator and author of Practical Charts
Alberto Cairo's books to date have been about encouraging us to better understand, read, and make data visualizations. The Art of Insight seeks to do what many ask about but which is often intangible: What is it that makes great visual designers able to come up with their magic? He achieves this through essays crafted in conversation with people who pull back the curtains on some of their work.
Visualization is about communication, language and syntax, and about the multiple small decisions taken. However, more than anything, it's about the love that is poured into the work. Love is the hardest emotion to define, though we recognize it when we see it, and yearn for its warm embrace. Love is sometimes conventional, sometimes unexplained, and this book is a wonderful exploration of both Alberto's, and his interviewees' love of their craft. There are great examples of technique, and discussion on how to elevate it through best practice or by breaking so‐called “rules.” This book goes behind the scenes of this brilliant work, and it expresses deep reflections on the foundations of the craft, and how we might do the same to find our own way.
Of course we all have our own opinions but Alberto teaches us to converse with what we see, and also with its creators. This is a wonderfully freeing principle to better understand data visualizations, and to do so critically, but with empathy.
Finally, any book that includes a quote from Black Sabbath gets my unconditional love.
—Ken Field, researcher, cartographer, and author of Cartography and Thematic Mapping
Copyright © 2024 by Alberto Cairo. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781119797395 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781119797241 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119797234 (ePub)
Cover Design: Alberto Cairo and Wiley
Cover Image: © Nadieh Bremer | Visual Cinnamon
For Alex,
lover of darkness, dragons, and dreams
I have sought only reasons to transcend our darkest nihilism. Not, I would add, through virtue, nor because of some rare elevation of the spirit, but from an instinctive fidelity to a light in which I was born, and in which for thousands of years men have learned to welcome life even in suffering.
Albert Camus
Take advice to ditch all adverbs lightly.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Enjoy and have others enjoy, without doing harm to yourself or anyone else;
that is all there is to morality.
Nicolas Chamfort
Being a person is not a goal that can be achieved but a purpose to be sustained.
Martin Hägglund
It is not doctrines that console us in the end, but people: their example, their singularity, their courage and steadfastness, their being with us when we need them the most. In dark times, nothing so abstract as faith in History, Progress, Salvation, or Revolution will do us much good. These are doctrines. It is people we need, people whose examples show us what it means to go on, to keep going, despite everything.
Michael Ignatieff
The lover of life's not a sinner.
Black Sabbath
About the Author
Alberto Cairo is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami (UM). He's also the director of visualization at UM's Institute for Data Science and Computing.
Cairo is the author of the books The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization (2013), The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication (2016), and How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information (2019).
Cairo is a journalist and a designer with a long career in the news industry. He has been the director of online information graphics at the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, and director of graphics and multimedia for the magazines of Editora Globo, in Brazil. Since the early 2000s he has worked as a designer and educator in more than 30 countries.
Besides teaching, Cairo regularly designs visualizations and consults for technology companies, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and international organizations.
A Note on Typography
This book contains numerous and extensive quotes. I'm using two main type styles. The one in this paragraph indicates that I'm the person who is writing.
This other style—smaller font, different color—indicates a quote from either a book, an article, or the words of one of my many interlocutors.
“One Amongst Many,” a physical, interactive data installation of women in computing.
“Young women entering fields dominated by men often feel like there is no history of people like them in their field. We know now that this is an issue of storytelling, not of history. Women have been contributing to every field, however invisibly, since the beginning of time. One Amongst Many attempts to illuminate the histories of women in computing that have been diminished or erased. It is a data installation where each woman is arranged in a field by the year of her greatest achievement, and the height of the orb correlated to her renown. Every orb starts dimmed, and gets brighter each time another person reads about them, literally shedding light on the woman's accomplishments.”
By Christina Dacanay, Tina Rungsawang, and Shirley Wu: https://oneamongstmany.com/
Photos by Nok Jangkamolkulchai.
IntroductionOn Magic
with Shirley Wu
To live well is to cope with the ways in which life is hard while finding enough in one's life worth wanting.
—Kieran Setiya
One early morning in November of 2021, Alex, my youngest son, questioned me about the apparent meaninglessness of life. “What are we humans here for anyway?” he asked.
Alex has been a precocious old soul since he learned to talk. The week I was working on this preamble, he wrote an autobiographical poem that contains a haunting alliteration to define who he is: “I'm a lover of darkness, dragons, and dreams.”
At the time of our conversation we were both coming to terms with that darkness: healing, mustering our dragons for battle, and rebuilding our dreams. The pandemic years had been tough.
I remember myself thinking in silence for a moment. We were on our morning commute. Alex, sitting in the back of the car, was looking out at parents and kids passing by on their way to school. He was in a somber mood, and I guess he wasn't expecting a quick answer from Dad, who's usually so aloof and introverted.
But my answer poured out like a torrent. Life, I said, is indeed meaningless in itself. Meaning isn't a predetermined thing that exists beyond ourselves and our connections to others, or that we receive from higher powers. Meaning is something that we build by living through the myriad of little but immensely relevant events that cross our paths. It emerges from paying deep attention to the joys and beauty offered by the objects, creatures, and people whom we love, and by sharing back with them. That's all there is to a good life brimming with magic.
Alex's reply was a soft murmur.
I parked at school and noticed that my son was staring at a fence next to us. There was movement on it.
Alex suddenly yelled, his voice a mixture of excitement and wonderment: “Dad, look, songbirds!” Indeed, there they were, two merry critters standing on the wire, chirping at each other while ignoring the multitude below.
I smiled. “See? That's what I meant. That's the magic.”
This is a book about such magic. To write it, I spoke with many magicians, visualization designers who build meaning as a tribute to themselves or as an aid to others. They make things, they enjoy the process and, by sharing its results, they brighten the world.
Some of these designers are old friends; others are people whose work I've found fascinating more recently. They are data scientists, engineers, analysts, humanists, artists, journalists, and educators, each with their own views about the practice.
My sample for this book isn't representative of anything outside of my head. The designers you're about to meet are the first who came to my mind when I felt the need to rekindle my love for the design of information, the craft to which I've devoted my professional life. A half‐joking alternative title I entertained was On the Consolation of Visualization, as a nod to Boethius's famous On the Consolation of Philosophy. The list of people whose work I find interesting, inspiring, or intriguing is much longer, though; should I have more pages and time, I'd have reached out to many more designers to seek solace.
This is also a book about insight. Not in the sense of data‐driven analytical insight; there are plenty of books in the market about that, including some I've written myself. This book is different. I use the term insight in the sense of exploring who the designers I spoke with are and how they see themselves. I'm interested in how they shape their craft, how the craft shapes them in return, and how that interaction creates an ethos.
Finally, I envision this book as one link in the broader chain of historical conversations about information design and visualization. It's the result of the interplay between what my interlocutors told me, past readings that were brought back to memory during our chats, and my reflections about both. I've ended up writing an essay in the literal sense of the term: a way to essay ideas, to contemplate them in a nonjudgmental manner with no expectation of reaching conclusions, of inferring overarching lessons, or—gods forbid the hubris—of developing a coherent system of thought. The philosopher Joan‐Carles Mèlich calls this approach to thinking and writing “the wisdom of the uncertain.”
This The Art of Insight is, then, a wandering, and not a solitary one.
I'll begin it with my friend and occasional collaborator Shirley Wu, and to the one‐night show that she hosted at EV Gallery (New York City) in the fall of 2022. It was titled “wonder & hope” (Figure I.1).
Figure I.1: “wonder & hope” Tuan Huang /
https://www.wonder-and-hope.art/ / last accessed Febuary 16, 2023
‘wonder & hope' was a data‐driven reflection on loss, grief, and healing:
Until the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic, I had always loved being outdoors. There was a sense of wonder about it: the blue sky, seeing flowers blooming, and birds chirping. I used to take many photographs whenever I went outside or visited a different city for work.
And then the pandemic happened. We all had to isolate. My husband and I started reading report after report of anti‐Asian hate crimes across the United States, especially in New York and San Francisco (where we used to live), and I stopped going out by myself. When we moved to New York City a year later for me to start grad school, I often had to walk outside by myself, and I was paralyzed with fear. I realized that I had stopped looking up. I'd keep my eyes firmly on the ground because I had read that making eye contact could be a trigger for hate crimes. I had lost all joy of being outside.
I wanted to tell that story somehow. I've always used data to tell stories about others, but could I use my own data to explain and understand myself? I started thinking about how to quantify the joy I used to feel, and realized that I used to love taking photos outside. So I gathered four years of my photos, from March 2018 to March 2022, and processed their dates, primary colors, and geotagged coordinates. And just for fun, I went through all 20,000 or so photos by hand to categorize them into food, flower, and art photos.
The first half of Shirley's 2022 show, “wonder,” consisted of a series of concentric diagrams, the first two corresponding to March and April of 2018 (Figure I.2).
In these visualizations, each symbol corresponds to a photograph out of large database. Symbols are colored and arranged according to each photograph's most common color. Symbols closer to the center, enclosed by a thick line, are photographs taken inside Shirley's home in Tokyo, where she lived during the spring of 2018. Shirley loves flowers and food, therefore the predominance of photos about them:
I start the show with March 2018, which is one of my favorite months, because I got to see the cherry blossoms in Tokyo. That's reflected in the data and denoted in the visualization with a flower symbol. The next month, I got to visit China and Amsterdam, so those photos are marked by dots and flowers further from the center. The same happens in May 2019, when I was in Spain and Germany (Figure I.3). But in February 2020, the dots shrink back into the center. It was right before the lockdowns, so we stopped going out as much. At the same time, we were cooking a lot more at home, hence all the food photos, denoted by double rings—they look like plates!
On March 16, 2020, the city of San Francisco issued a stay‐at‐home order, which would end in May. The plates corresponding to April, May, and June of that year, shown in a three‐dimensional array on Figure I.4, reveal a striking reduction of the number of photographs. Shirley would only resume taking outdoor photos almost a year later, in the Spring of 2022:
Figure I.2: “wonder & hope” March and April of 2018
Figure I.3: “wonder & hope” May of 2019 and February of 2020
We moved to Brooklyn in August of 2021, and I had a daily commute. That's when you start to see more photographs outdoors again. But I realized that I lost all sense of wonder about being outside.
Shirley's joy had vanished. That's noticeable on the graphic corresponding to March of 2022 (Figure I.5). There aren't photographs of flowers, and just a handful of food. Her sense of the passage of time also got distorted. As part of the ‘wonder’ portion of the show was a bowl where the circular diagrams were projected chronologically. Above this bowl, a solenoid valve—a device controlled programmatically to open and close at varying intervals—released water (Figure I.6):
Figure I.4: Photograph by Tuan Huang
Figure I.5: “wonder & hope” March of 2022
The speed of the water drip corresponds to the number of COVID deaths each week. I wanted the water drip to distort the graphics, symbolizing what I felt during the pandemic: a warping of time and of reality itself. I was in constant fear and worry, and this felt like the best way to convey it.
Shirley then explained a marvelous design accident:
The solenoid valve, because it was mechanical, had this really loud clicking noise. Do you hear a click, click, click sound?
I told Shirley I did. She continued:
There was one person who told me something really beautiful. She thought that the water drips were tears. I really liked that interpretation.
I then told Shirley about a theme I'll return to later in this book: the types of visualizations that I design are intended to “communicate,” to “carry meaning” from a designer (me) to an audience (you). The way that I've usually taught this process is that (a) I have a message that I wish to convey—a “story,” should you prefer that term; (b) I encode that message using shapes, colors, and other visual attributes paired with textual annotations; and then (c) I show the result to an audience to decode and interpret.
Figure I.6: Photographs by Tuan Huang
The challenge to this way of conceiving data visualization is that it's naive. We can control what happens on our end, but we might lose sight of what happens on the other, the reader's. A reader's interpretation can be very different to what we intended:
There's a part of this project that I don't consider data visualization, but art. In data visualization we try to communicate; sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't. But the artistic part of my project is that it gave people enough space to relate to its content, and come up with very personal interpretations and make the project their own. Visitors saw themselves in the diagrams that I had designed. They projected their own lived experiences. So, the story in these graphics is very personal, but it's also not personal at all. It's a shared experience.
Let me go back to the water drip. I purposely didn't add a label to explain that the speed of the water drip was based on COVID data. I got a lot of questions about it, and when I explained the meaning behind it, everyone appreciated the answer. Even before they asked, they told me that the clicking sound caused a certain anxiety within them. They intuitively grasped that the emotion I wanted to elicit was related to my experience through the pandemic, and they felt it too.
Because I didn't explain everything, and instead offered viewers space, it led to beautiful interpretations, like the tears. The push and pull, the tension between giving enough and then pulling some things back—that's one of the most relevant things I think I've learned in this past year.
In my book How Charts Lie (2019) I wrote that the information that we put in a visualization is sometimes less revealing than the information that we leave out. By not explaining her designs, by leaving the door open to ambiguity, Shirley allowed visitors to walk into her visuals and see themselves in them.
The second part of Shirley's exhibit was titled ‘hope’. It consisted of a series of white flowers (Figure I.7):
wonder is about my experiences leading up to March 2022, when I first realized what I had lost. After that, I forced myself to look up and around more when walking outside. For a month, I kept feeling dread. Things that used to excite me before the pandemic, like beautiful architecture, would mean nothing to me.
Figure I.7: Photograph by Tuan Huang
Then one day in April, I looked up and saw a tree with its first blooms. I immediately thought, “Oh, that's really beautiful,” and in that moment I felt hope again. That's why the flowers in my show are suspended above everyone's line of sight. I wanted visitors to notice only after they've gone through the whole story, the whole journey with me. I wanted it so that when they finally looked up, they'd see the flowers, the hope.
Each flower corresponds to a week between 2018 and 2022. Their size is proportional to the number of photos of flowers I took during those seven days. When people walked past them, a motion detector made each flower gently light up.
The metaphor is straightforward. Flowers had disappeared from Shirley's photographs during the pandemic as a result of her life becoming grayer, duller, sadder. Their blooming, and their lighting up in the show are expressions of Shirley's healing. In hindsight, Shirley sees her show at EV Gallery as a culmination of a process of reflection, self‐discovery, and the value of community, both professional and personal:
I realized how my identity was intertwined with the show. As a child, I was a Chinese girl growing up in the Japanese countryside. Then, my family moved to the United States and I was a Chinese girl in America. Later, I became a professional and I was a Chinese‐American woman working in software engineering in Silicon Valley. All of these different cultures have implicitly told me in one way or another that I should be obedient, quiet, and humble, that I shouldn't take up space.
Shirley says that her upbringing and career led her to struggle to be “socially acceptable”: too many times she heard people say that she was too loud, opinionated, and intimidating. She felt pressure to conform to patriarchal social norms and she adopted a habit of belittling herself:
This show has meant so much to me because I've spent most of my life making myself small. It's been healing to be able to take up actual physical space with my work. I've also always had a hard time asking for help. Why would anyone want to help me with such a personal project? But with this show, I was forced to ask for help; it was on a much bigger scale than I could handle by myself, and I'm glad I did. So many friends volunteered, helping with the design of the room, with the fabrication, with the install—and the install alone took more than twenty hours!
And then there were all the people that showed up in person. That was amazing to see. I had so many friends and family drop by, but also so many people I didn't know, who came because they liked my previous digital work and wanted to offer support. That gives me courage and confidence, it shows that what I do matters—that I matter.
Later in the conversation, Shirley zoomed out from the “wonder & hope” show:
When I first started with data visualization, I didn't take myself that seriously. That's reflected in one of my earliest (and favorite) projects, the 2016 “An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton” (Figure I.8). I was obsessed with the musical. A year later, when working with my friend Nadieh Bremer on an article about homelessness in the U.S. that was published by The Guardian, I realized that I could use visualization for more serious topics that I also cared about.
“Legends” (Figure I.9), launched in 2018, is my most pivotal project; it changed the way I view my work. While working on it I realized the huge discrepancy between the number of women Nobel laureates (51 at the time) and their male counterparts (853). I was incensed. That's when I remembered how rarely I saw women's names in history and science textbooks, and in that moment I realized how small I had made myself—because I had subconsciously internalized that women couldn't be legacy‐worthy.
That's when I promised myself that I'd pursue my lifelong dream of being an artist. That year (2019), I was able to land an artist residency at NYU ITP, a master's program for art and technology. There, I collaborated with two of the students, Christina Dacanay and Tina Rungsawang, on a physical data installation of 16 women in computing—my first project that took up space. The experience was so inspiring that I decided to go back to ITP as a grad student.
In the last two years, I've explored what my art could look like, experimenting with data visualization within the context of that art, and taking the time to work on myself, instead of what my clients want me to work on. That's how I got to “wonder & hope.”
