September 22

Schneiderman – Information Visualization

An exhaustive analysis of different types of data and different ways of visualizing it.
The guiding principle is this “visual-information-seeking mantra:”

Overview, zoom and filter, details on demand.

Categories include linear, map, 3D world, multidimensional, temporal, tree, network, overview task, zoom task, filter task, and on and on…it’s complicated. There are many possibilities and considerations – it’s literally endless. I have no idea what to say on this topic beyond that.


Schnotz and Bannert – Construction and interference in learning from multiple representation

A paper describing a research study on how the addition of graphic representations to text affects learning. The authors discuss how mental models are constructed during learning and how the addition of graphics or pictures affects that process. They find that in some cases pictorial representations actually interfere with learning. Their findings show the importance of choosing a pictorial representation that is well matched to the mental task. The study challenges Paivo’s dual coding theory by examining the question in greater detail and showing that Paivo’s theory is too simplistic. The addition of graphics to text does not always reinforce and enhance learning. Rather, how pictorial representations are used, which ones are used (and for which kinds of learners), as well as when they are used have a profound effect on learning.


Norman—The Design of Everyday Things Chapter 1

This had me saying “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes” to myself as I was reading. As someone who is frequently baffled by the technology I need to use on a daily basis, I was happy to read his complaints about how overcomplicated and badly designed so many things are. Telephones, DVD players, cable remotes – nothing is as simple and intuitive as it is often promised to be. I am allergic to reading manuals so I pretty much just do what I can figure out without having to do so. Not having grown up with technology, I don’t have the native grasp of how these things work that, for example, my daughter does. Has anyone done a study of this issue? Everyone talks about it – the kids can just pick up the remotes and the cell phones and they somehow know what to do without instruction or reading the manual. My daughter is always rolling her eyes in utter frustration with both her parents – that we don’t seem to understand the simplest things. We need for things to be self-explanatory, simple, logical, and easy to use. They rarely are. I don’t have a DVD player in our bedroom simply because I couldn’t get so far as to buy one I was so confused about the different formats. I can’t even understand it well enough to buy it, much less use it! I watch DVDs on my laptop because that’s all I can handle. Actually I just started downloading them to my laptop and bypassing the issue entirely.

As I am part of the huge boomer generation, you would think people would be madly working on making technology more accessible to us, especially as we get older, more forgetful, less able to hit tiny keys and read instructions in tiny type. Much as we like to pretend that we are not now and never will be old – it’s reality. I don’t see a whole lot of attention being paid to that fact.