Have you ever wondered how much data passes through us every day? From newspapers, emails, generated bank statements, conversations, social media, websites, etc.? In the past few decades, computing and the Internet have completely changed our ability to create, store, and retrieve information. The global economy and instant messaging have created an explosion of the amount of data we create and contact. At the same time, a large amount of data leads to a large amount of possible confusion and difficult decision-making. There are more data available than we can easily process.
As the amount of data available to us grows exponentially, information visualisation becomes more and more important. From business decision-making to simple route navigation, designers have a huge (and growing) demand to present data to provide value to help the decision-making process.
Information visualisation is the art of representing data in a way that is easy to understand and manipulate, helping to understand information and make it useful.
Dashboards and scatter charts are common examples of information visualisation. It allows users to draw insights from abstract data efficiently and effectively by drawing an overview and displaying related connections. Information visualisation can be used to explore the relationship between data, confirm our views on the data or interpret the data in an easy-to-understand way, but it can also be used correctly or incorrectly to help convince someone with data.
The process of creating information visualisation usually starts with understanding the information needs of the target user group, how, when, and where to use it. Based on these insights, designers can determine which form of data organisation is needed to achieve user goals. Once information is organised in a way that helps users better understand, and helps them apply it to achieve their goals, visualisation technology is the next tool that designers use. Create visual elements (such as maps and graphics) and appropriate labels, and use visual parameters such as color, contrast, distance, font type and size to create appropriate visual hierarchy and visual paths through information.
Whether you are involved in the emerging big data field or not, information visualisation skills are in great demand. Information visualisation allow to organise and present data, and transform raw data into meaningful patterns and actionable insights.
Information visualisation allows us to clearly understand the meaning of information in the visual context through maps or graphics. It enables human thinking to understand data more naturally, making it easier to identify trends, patterns and outliers in large data sets.