Thus, the viewer must quickly understand what is displayed and what it represents while still listening to your explanation. For example, during an oral presentation, a figure will be displayed for a limited time. Each of these media represents different physical sizes for the figure, but more importantly, each of them also implies different ways of viewing and interacting with the figure. Rule 3: Adapt the Figure to the Support MediumĪ figure can be displayed on a variety of media, such as a poster, a computer monitor, a projection screen (as in an oral presentation), or a simple sheet of paper (as in a printed article). While this is acceptable for a general-audience publication, it would not be acceptable in a scientific publication if actual numerical values were not given elsewhere in the article. The chosen layout makes it actually difficult to estimate the number of kidney cancer deaths because of its bottom position and the location of the labelled ticks at the top. This is a self-contained figure that delivers a clear message on cancer deaths. It also takes advantage of the reading direction (English for NYT) in order to ease comparison between men and women while the central labels give an immediate access to the main message of the figure (cancer). It exploits the fact that the number of new cases is always greater than the corresponding number of deaths to mix the two values. However, the layout used here is better for the intended audience. The data is made of four series (men deaths/cases, women deaths/cases) that could have been displayed using classical double column (deaths/cases) bar plots. This new figure was made with matplotlib using approximated data. This is a remake of a figure that was originally published in the New York Times (NYT) in 2007. This has proven to be a difficult exercise. Finally, the general public may be the most difficult audience of all since you need to design a simple, possibly approximated, figure that reveals only the most salient part of your research ( Figure 1). In that case, you may have to add extra information to make sure the concept is fully understood. Student audiences require special care since the goal for that situation is to explain a concept. However, if you intend to publish a figure in a scientific journal, you should make sure your figure is correct and conveys all the relevant information to a broader audience. If you are making a figure for yourself and your direct collaborators, you can possibly skip a number of steps in the design process, because each of you knows what the figure is about. The graphical design of the visual should be informed by this intent. Consequently, it is important to identify, as early as possible in the design process, the audience and the message the visual is to convey. Given the definition above, problems arise when how a visual is perceived differs significantly from the intent of the conveyer.
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