Hello Examples

Lesson 2: Four Perspectives Application

Briefly applying the four perspectives.

Objective

Apply the four perspectives framework to real-world data visualizations, demonstrating how each lens reveals different aspects of effective design.

Outline

This lecture revisits the four perspectives on data visualization from the first lecture and uses them to analyze demonstrative examples, the types of things students will be able to build by the end of the course.

The four analytical lenses

We examine data visualization through four complementary views.

• Representation: Understanding data attributes and their visual encodings.
• Task: Identifying user workflows and problems being solved.
• Message: Recognizing emotional resonance and storytelling techniques.
• Dialogue: Evaluating reader agency and opportunities for co-creation.

Group activity

Students break into groups of 3-4 to analyze real interactive data visualizations using the four perspectives framework.

• We Feel Fine: Visualization showing blog posts with color-coded emotions.
• En-ROADS Climate Simulator: Interactive climate policy simulator with multiple sliders and graphs showing policy impacts over time.
• Parable of the Polygons: Interactive game demonstrating segregation dynamics using triangles and squares.
• U.S. Gun Deaths: Visualization showing individual lives lost to gun violence with orange and gray arcs representing stolen and potential years.
• Income Gaps: Interactive exploration of income inequality allowing filtering by occupation, gender, race, and age.
• FoodSim San Francisco: Geospatial simulation of food access in San Francisco through an interactive map-based visualization.

Skills Labs

Introduction to hands-on tutorials for building interactive visualizations (starts next lecture). See https://mooc.interactivedatascience.courses/labs.

Take Aways

Effective visualizations can be understood and improved through systematic analysis using multiple complementary perspectives.

• Each of the four lenses reveals different aspects of effective design.
• Real-world examples demonstrate how representation, task, message, and dialogue work together.
• Practice applying these frameworks helps develop critical evaluation skills for both analyzing and creating visualizations.

Citations

[1] G. Aisch, A. Cox, and K. Quealy, "You Draw It: How Family Income Predicts Children's College Chances." The New York Times Company, May 28, 2015. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/28/upshot/you-draw-it-how-family-income-affects-childrens-college-chances.html

[2] R. Binx, "Vortex." 2015. Available: https://rachelbinx.com/data-visualization/vortex

[3] R. Binx, "Designing for Realtime Spacecraft Operations." BocoupLLC, Apr. 2016. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuYKhSHcRSQ

[4] J. Harris, "We Feel Fine." YouTube, Dec. 2009. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi8WrnWNSzU

[5] W. S. Cleveland and R. McGill, "Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods," Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 79, no. 387, pp. 531–554, Sep. 1984, doi: 10.1080/01621459.1984.10478080.

[6] Flipflops, "I feel… everything." Flipflops.org, Oct. 2007. Available: https://www.flipflops.org/category/thoughtful/page/2/

[7] V. Hart and N. Case, "Parable of the Polygons." Nicky Case, 2022. Available: https://ncase.me/polygons/

[8] Isle Royale National Park Michigan, "Wolf & Moose Populations." National Parks Service, Mar. 29, 2024. Available: https://www.nps.gov/isro/learn/nature/wolf-moose-populations.htm

[9] S. D. Kamvar and J. Harris, "We feel fine and searching the emotional web," in Proceedings of the fourth ACM international conference on Web search and data mining, Hong Kong China: ACM, Feb. 2011, pp. 117–126. doi: 10.1145/1935826.1935854.

[10] A. KIRK, DATA VISUALISATION: a handbook for data driven design. S.l.: SAGE PUBLICATIONS, 2024.

[11] A. Kirk, "Visualizing Data." Visualising Data Ltd, 2024. Available: https://visualisingdata.com/

[12] T. Munzner, "A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation," IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 921–928, Nov. 2009, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2009.111.

[13] T. Munzner, "Visualization Analysis and Design." AK Peters Visualization Series, 2014. Available: https://books.apple.com/us/book/visualization-analysis-and-design/id1567434451

[14] T. Munzner, Visualization analysis and design. in A.K. Peters visualization series. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

[15] T. Munzner, "Task Abstraction (Ch 3), Visualization Analysis & Design, 2021." YouTube, 2021. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHljd-cgICY

[16] M. Nix, Visual simplexity: die Darstellung großer Datenmengen. Frankfurt am Main: entwickler.press, 2013.

[17] K. Rees, Periscopic, "U.S. Gun Deaths." Periscopic, 2018. Available: https://guns.periscopic.com/

[18] A. Pottinger, "FoodSim: San Francisco." 2023. Available: https://foodsimsf.com/

[19] A. Pottinger, "Income Gaps." 2023. Available: https://incomegaps.com/

[20] A. Pottinger, "Interactive Data Science." 2024. Available: https://mooc.interactivedatascience.courses/

[21] A. S. Pottinger et al., "Combining Game Design and Data Visualization to Inform Plastics Policy: Fostering Collaboration between Science, Decision-Makers, and Artificial Intelligence," 2023, arXiv. doi: 10.48550/ARXIV.2312.11359.

[22] A. Pottinger, L. Connor, B. Guzder-Williams, M. Weltman-Fahs, N. Gondek, and T. Bowles, "Climate-driven doubling of U.S. maize loss probability: Interactive simulation with neural network Monte Carlo," JDSSV, 2025. doi: 10.52933/jdssv.v5i3.134

[23] A. S. Pottinger and G. Zarpellon, "Pyafscgap.org: Open source multi-modal Python-basedtools for NOAA AFSC RACE GAP," JOSS, vol. 8, no. 86, p. 5593, Jun. 2023, doi: 10.21105/joss.05593.

[24] J. N. Rooney-Varga, F. Kapmeier, J. D. Sterman, A. P. Jones, M. Putko, and K. Rath, "The Climate Action Simulation," Simulation & Gaming, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 114–140, Apr. 2020, doi: 10.1177/1046878119890643.

[25] J. Schell, The art of game design: a book of lenses, Third edition. Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

[26] J. Snow, On the mode of communication of cholera. London: John Churchill, 1855. Available: https://archive.org/details/b28985266/page/n57/mode/2up

[27] J. Stasko, C. Gorg, Z. Liu, and K. Singhal, "Jigsaw: Supporting Investigative Analysis through Interactive Visualization," in 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, Sacramento, CA, USA: IEEE, Oct. 2007, pp. 131–138. doi: 10.1109/VAST.2007.4389006.

[28] The Document Foundation, LibreOffice. (2024). The Document Foundation.

[29] ThoughtLab, The Wendy and Eric Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment, and Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, "A Treaty to End Plastic Pollution. Forever." University of California, 2023. Available: https://plasticstreaty.berkeley.edu/

[30] B. Victor, "Inventing on Principle." CUSEC, 2012. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

[31] B. Victor, "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable." MIT Media Lab, Apr. 04, 2013. Available: https://vimeo.com/67076984

[32] Visual Computing BLOG, "Tamara Munzner discussed quantification in terms of a nested model of visualization design and evaluation." Transregional Collaborative Research Center. Available: https://www.visual-computing.org/2018/10/17/computerscienceconferenceweek/201810_conferenceweek_munzner-2/

[33] C. Ware, "Colin Ware | The Data Visualzation Research Lab." University of New Hampshire. Available: https://ccom.unh.edu/vislab/people/colin_ware/

[34] C. Ware, Information visualization: perception for design, Fourth edition. Cambridge, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2021.

[35] Wikipedia Contributors, "Snow-cholera-map-1.jpg." Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2020. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snow-cholera-map-1.jpg

[36] Wikipedia Contributors, "Bret Victor." Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Jun. 22, 2023. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Victor

[37] Wikipedia Contributors, "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge." Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Sep. 21, 2024. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galaxy%27s_Edge

[38] Wikipedia Contributors, "It's a Small World." Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Sep. 24, 2024. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Small_World

[39] N. Yee, "Motivations for Play in Online Games," CyberPsychology & Behavior, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 772–775, Dec. 2006, doi: 10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772.

[40] J. Harris and S. Kavar, "We Feel Fine." We Feel Fine., 2006. Available: http://www.wefeelfine.org and https://jjh.org/we-feel-fine.

[41] J. Harris, "The Web's Secret Stories." TED Conference., 2007. Available: https://youtu.be/zAvNlh2Z0GI?feature=shared.

[42] Thanks to https://unsplash.com/photos/DHl49oyrn7Y

License

This lesson is part of Interactive Data Science and Visualization and is released under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 license.