New Data Visualizations

One of my enduring interests is data visualization. It hits so many user experience hot buttons: cognition, potential for confusion, Gestalt principles, and so forth. Research in the past few years seems to have slowed considerably in this area, perhaps because much of the breakthrough work has already been done. We're not seeing new methods of visualization now, but refinements of old ones. Fisheye views (PDF) have been around for a very long time now. So have heat maps, tree maps, network maps, and so on. They're just getting new treatments and makeovers. If you want to see how a lot of them have been retooled with modern computing power and pretty colors, check out this article in the online zine Smashing.

Most of the applications are intriguing and professionally done, but I'm not seeing anything that makes me sit forward in my chair. Many old standbys have been dusted off, like the radar chart, but everything here has been done elsewhere. I don't suppose there are many more visualization methods to be discovered. But the flip side of this is that these techniques are getting more common and less expensive, and therefore more accessible to us. I've wanted to do tree maps forever, but no client has ever warmed to the idea. If you want to see how the principle can be applied well, if a bit understated, look at the daily stock market data here.

Control is Everything

Scott Adams got me thinking. In his blog entry for August 17, he mentions that one of our strongest needs it to feel like we're in control. He used an old example: A genie offers you two choices. In the first choice, "You can eat at the finest restaurants in the world for free, twice a week. The only catch is that the genie picks the day, when you are not already booked, and he picks the specific restaurant." In the second choice, "You can eat at “good” restaurants, again for free, twice a week. But this time you can schedule it whenever you want, up to two places per week, and pick whatever “good” restaurant you want."

He goes on to develop the theme that the first choice probably wouldn't make many people happy, because they would eventually feel the keen sense of loss of control. The second choice, while gastronomically less appealing, is probably a better one for most of us.

It reminded me that one thing users dearly love is control, or at least the illusion of it. This is something that subconsciously irks me about lots of software and websites, I think. It's why I'm irritated with Flash so often. It just takes off and does things without asking me. The same thing annoys me about flashing ads, shifting menus, and other things that don't help me do things, but invade my locus of control. We humans don't seem to resent losing control if we don't expect it. We accept that the good guy may die at the end of the movie, but we'll shriek in fury if we can't change the channel to another movie. And we accept a loss of control when it benefits us. My car's engine does hundreds of things that I don't need to approve as they're happening. But there are some places where humans just won't accept interference. I wouldn't pay less for a car if it decided by itself when it would start. The same thing is true for software and websites, I think.

Decluttering

A group of scientists at MIT headed by Ruth Rosenholtz, a long-time researcher into vision and technology, has developed a prototype application in MATLAB that determines the amount of clutter on-screen (Link). The HCI profession has long needed something that could separate figure from ground reliably. The program is only in prototype, but apparently it's rather promising.

The problem of figuring out what's vital few from trivial many isn't trivial itself. Nuclear facility control rooms are a case in point. Rows of lights can go from being background hum to suddenly becoming extremely important. How much do you expose to an operator, or to a website user? Hicks Law was an early attempt at measuring how much stuff was too much, but the sophistication of control schemes today needs a better way of knowing when you've overstuffed the interface.

Are We The Way of the Future?

Computerworld recently published an article listing twelve job skills that no employer can refuse. The usual suspects hopped onto the list - whatever's hot, that is. Wireless, for example. But one of the twelve was usability. That surprised me, for several reasons.

First, usability isn't a universally-needed skill, at least not at the level a specialist brings. It kicks in only when the stakes are high and failure is all too expensive. For websites, it's primarily for ecommerce and other high-end sites. And those are designed and built on the coasts, not in the flyover zone where I live. Check out monster.com, dice.com, UPA's career page, or careerbuilder.com, and you'll see what I mean. Jobs are plentiful in Massachusetts, Washington State, California, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. There aren't many in Iowa, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, Alabama, and most of the other flyovers. So how do we qualify as owners of a "can't miss" skillset?