discussion question
Annotation
Annotation
Concerned with explaining things
What is the right amount and type of hep your viewers will need when consuming the visualization
Most neglected layer of visualization anatomy
Least amount of pure design thinking
Conforms to the Goldilocks principle
Too much and the display becomes cluttered, overwhelming and potentially unnecessarily patronizing
Too little and the viewers have to find their way around the visualization and thus forming their own understanding
Main groups of annotations
Project annotations – Helping viewers understand what the project is about and how to use it
Chart annotations – Helping viewers perceive the charts and optimize their potential interpretations
Project annotations
Help viewers understand what the project is about and how to use it, and may include the following features
Headings: title, sub-titles and section headings.
Introductions: providing background and aims of the project.
User guides: advice or instruction for how to use any interactive features
Multimedia: the potential to enhance your project using appropriate imagery, videos or illustrations.
Footnotes: potentially includes data sources, credits, usage information, and time/date stamps.
chart annotations
Help viewers perceive the charts and optimize their potential interpretations and may include the following features
Charts apparatus: axis lines, gridlines, tick marks
Labels: axis titles, axis labels, value labels
Legend: providing details keys for color or size associations
Reading guide: detail instructions and interpretation of charts
Captions: Key findings and commentaries
Chart apparatus and labels
Legend
CAPtion
Typography
Typography deals with text (How it will look?)
Typeface is a designed collection of glyths representing individual letters, numbers and other symbols of language based on a cohesive style
A font is the variation across several physical dimensions of the typeface such as weight, size, condensation and italization.
Typeface can have one or many different fonts in its family.
Type effectively represents the collective appearance formed by the choice of typeface and the font.
Serif typefaces add lines at the end of letters and symbol examples Garamond
Mainly used for print display
Sans-serif add no extra lines/stokes to characters example Verdana
Labels, title and screen display.
Annotation Influences
Trustworthy design – Maximize the information viewers have to ensure all your data work is transparent and clearly explained.
Accessible design – What is the right amount and type of annotation suitable to the setting and complexity of your subject?
Elegant design – Minimize the clutter
.MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Fill { fill:#465359; } .MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Stroke { stroke:#465359; }
.MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Fill { fill:#4472C4; } .MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Stroke { stroke:#4472C4; }