Everything we know about how humans interpret graphics - Kennedy Elliot

Kennedy Elliott reviews research on how humans perceive and interpret visual data, explaining which chart types and visual encodings are most effective.

OpenVis Conf April 25th-26th, 2016 Interact with this and other talk videos on openvisconf.com/ Follow us on Twitter for more information: twitter.com/OpenVisConf Abstract: One of the largest guiding forces that allows graphics editors, designers, and developers to make the best, most memorable graphics of our time is… sheer intuition. Visualizers rely mostly on instinct cultivated by years of experience to make color, layout, text, graph style, and user interface elements decisions, for better or for worse. There is a dearth of research available to visualizers to inform whether to use a radio dial or checkbox, or if that scatterplot confuses your audience, or if simply placing that big button a bit higher up and to the right will lead to significantly higher engagement. However, there is research available that is pertinent to visualizers, and can help us understand the way humans interact with and perceive graphics, which will lead us to making better, more informed graphics In this talk, Kennedy will present and discuss research from academics, user experience experts and results from newsrooms’ own private A/B labs. About our Speaker: Kennedy Elliott is a graphics editor at The Washington Post. She codes, designs and reports interactive graphics and stories. She was previously at The Guardian, Associated Press and Nielsen. She believes that a human-centered approach should be applied to data visualizations and news graphics. She loves computers but thinks humans are more interesting. She thinks that if we learn more about the way humans process information, we can make graphics better for everyone. More about Kennedy: twitter.com/kennelliott