Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization

by Vidya Setlur, Bridget Cogley

What happens when a researcher and a practitioner spend hours crammed in a Fiat discussing data visualization? Beyond creating beautiful charts, they found greater richness in the craft as an integrated whole.

Drawing from their unconventional backgrounds, these two women take readers through a journey around perception, semantics, and intent as the triad that influences visualization. This visually engaging book blends ideas from theory, academia, and practice to craft beautiful, yet meaningful visualizations and dashboards.

How do you take your visualization skills to the next level? The book is perfect for analysts, research and data scientists, journalists, and business professionals. Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization is also an indispensable resource for just about anyone curious about seeing and understanding data. Think of it as a coffee book for the data geek in you.

Genres: Reference

323 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Neil Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight away, you can tell this is a labour of love – the enthusiasm and validity with which the authors describe elements from the three elements of theory, academia and practice really shine through. With backgrounds covering all three of these areas, it makes for a complete publication, full of examples not just from practical situations as a practitioner, but from theory – focusing in particular on theory of presentation, psychology, conversation and cognition. All things which influence creation of functional and aesthetic dashboards, most of which, like me, you probably hadn’t considered in requisite depth until now.

You might be at a small disadvantage if, like me, you’re not familiar with Japanese food and restaurants. From the start, the concept of a bento box is used as an example of something outside the world of data visualisation and dashboarding which is functional and aesthetically pleasing. It’s easy to see from here where the comparisons lie in dashboard design. But although the analogy was unfamiliar to me, the idea of inspiration from fields outside of dataviz is very much not … and so this was one of the first of many new things I learned from the book!

The book has a perfect flow – I love how every chapter references findings from previous chapters and every chapter summary, whilst doing just what it sets out to do, places the reader firmly in the right position in the narrative of the overall book. I know from experience that’s not an easy thing to do in such a textbook! With the book divided into sections around perception, semantics, and intent, that journey is made easier, and the final chapter on bringing all of the previous chapters together leads to a truly useful and detailed checklist of considerations to consider when designing your perfect functionally aesthetic dashboard.

And it’s this final chapter and checklist that encapsulates the system introduced throughout the book. Throughout, the book has allowed readers to make their own decisions, giving them the tools to do so, rather than just focusing on best practices or unbreakable principles. It feels like a useful and practical checklist that fully references the theory, practice and research behind every point, that can be used by visualisation and dashboard practitioners in any discipline.

One of the authors, Bridget Cogley, has introduced #FindtheFiat to get some buzz around the book. It’s a perfect hashtag, because the book feels like a discussion comprising of all the best expertise from two authors with from separate fields but with a combined passion, and was dreamt up on a physical journey in a Fiat. The car itself makes an appearance on the front cover – and I encourage you too to find the Fiat and improve your own learnings around functional aesthetics!

[Chase Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization" has a compelling narrative and a delightful voice that provides critical insights for features of visualization and visualization design. The book merges on findings from research and applications from design practice to encourage an updated look at how we should communicate data. As a visualization researcher, it's enlightening to see the breadth and depth of knowledge presented here. It's a must-have resource for those looking to learn more about data visualization.

[Rebecca Macnamee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps this book just went over my head? I was very excited to read it, as I have read a lot of books about data visualization and the authors have really interesting backgrounds. But, to be honest, I had trouble following the book's structure. I often did not get the connections they were trying to convey, and it felt like it made a lot of things more complicated than they needed to be.

I will be curious to read what others thought.