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October 03, 2007
Layering and Seperation with Tufte
Train tables are supposed to be hard to read; that's part of their charm. That being said, I agree with what Tufte says in this reading, though there was little I felt strongly about. Unfortunately the clarity of the chapter seems compromised in xeroxed copies due to loss of color and sharp lines -- while I'm pleased at not being required to buy his book, I think Tufte's strength is largely from his examples, especially in this chapter.
I didn't feel especially strongly about most of the discussion in this chapter; I felt his primary message was that supporting data & visual items included primarily for organization shouldn't overpower the primary data being presented. I suppose that's an idea that I take largely for granted. The most difficult part, I think, is determining what the primary data is and what is necessary to coherently present it. For example, with the hospital bill example, the primary data is the annotation, not the bill itself -- but the annotation is of little use without the bill. After this it is necessary to implement a design which will clearly display the primary & supporting data. I feel at this step Tufte doesn't give a lot of support; he presents examples of easy to read designs and gives little piecemeal recommendations of what to do and what not to do and some categories of operations, but I don't feel he offers any deep insight on how to create good designs.
Still I found this reading to be worthwhile and gave me some ideas on presenting information that I plan to use in the future, primarily just trying to remove as much as possible from an image while maintaining all primary & necessary supporting data.
(And to be honest, his re-design of the cluttered train timetable is a much clearer presentation of the data; I would probably have missed fewer trains in the past number of years if they had been re-designed similarly.)
Posted by Timothy at October 3, 2007 10:07 PM