– all angles 60°
Before they can solve problems, however, students must first know what type of visual representation to create and use for a given mathematics problem. Some students—specifically, high-achieving students, gifted students—do this automatically, whereas others need to be explicitly taught how. This is especially the case for students who struggle with mathematics and those with mathematics learning disabilities. Without explicit, systematic instruction on how to create and use visual representations, these students often create visual representations that are disorganized or contain incorrect or partial information. Consider the examples below.
Mrs. Aldridge ask her first-grade students to add 2 + 4 by drawing dots.
Notice that Talia gets the correct answer. However, because Colby draws his dots in haphazard fashion, he fails to count all of them and consequently arrives at the wrong solution.
Mr. Huang asks his students to solve the following word problem:
The flagpole needs to be replaced. The school would like to replace it with the same size pole. When Juan stands 11 feet from the base of the pole, the angle of elevation from Juan’s feet to the top of the pole is 70 degrees. How tall is the pole?
Compare the drawings below created by Brody and Zoe to represent this problem. Notice that Brody drew an accurate representation and applied the correct strategy. In contrast, Zoe drew a picture with partially correct information. The 11 is in the correct place, but the 70° is not. As a result of her inaccurate representation, Zoe is unable to move forward and solve the problem. However, given an accurate representation developed by someone else, Zoe is more likely to solve the problem correctly.
Some students will not be able to grasp mathematics skills and concepts using only the types of visual representations noted in the table above. Very young children and students who struggle with mathematics often require different types of visual representations known as manipulatives. These concrete, hands-on materials and objects—for example, an abacus or coins—help students to represent the mathematical idea they are trying to learn or the problem they are attempting to solve. Manipulatives can help students develop a conceptual understanding of mathematical topics. (For the purpose of this module, the term concrete objects refers to manipulatives and the term visual representations refers to schematic diagrams.)
It is important that the teacher make explicit the connection between the concrete object and the abstract concept being taught. The goal is for the student to eventually understand the concepts and procedures without the use of manipulatives. For secondary students who struggle with mathematics, teachers should show the abstract along with the concrete or visual representation and explicitly make the connection between them.
A move from concrete objects or visual representations to using abstract equations can be difficult for some students. One strategy teachers can use to help students systematically transition among concrete objects, visual representations, and abstract equations is the Concrete-Representational-Abstract (CRA) framework.
If you would like to learn more about this framework, click here.
CRA is effective across all age levels and can assist students in learning concepts, procedures, and applications. When implementing each component, teachers should use explicit, systematic instruction and continually monitor student work to assess their understanding, asking them questions about their thinking and providing clarification as needed. Concrete and representational activities must reflect the actual process of solving the problem so that students are able to generalize the process to solve an abstract equation. The illustration below highlights each of these components.
One promising practice for moving secondary students with mathematics difficulties or disabilities from the use of manipulatives and visual representations to the abstract equation quickly is the CRA-I strategy . In this modified version of CRA, the teacher simultaneously presents the content using concrete objects, visual representations of the concrete objects, and the abstract equation. Studies have shown that this framework is effective for teaching algebra to this population of students (Strickland & Maccini, 2012; Strickland & Maccini, 2013; Strickland, 2017).
Kim Paulsen discusses the benefits of manipulatives and a number of things to keep in mind when using them (time: 2:35).
Kim Paulsen, EdD Associate Professor, Special Education Vanderbilt University
View Transcript
Transcript: Kim Paulsen, EdD
Manipulatives are a great way of helping kids understand conceptually. The use of manipulatives really helps students see that conceptually, and it clicks a little more with them. Some of the things, though, that we need to remember when we’re using manipulatives is that it is important to give students a little bit of free time when you’re using a new manipulative so that they can just explore with them. We need to have specific rules for how to use manipulatives, that they aren’t toys, that they really are learning materials, and how students pick them up, how they put them away, the right time to use them, and making sure that they’re not distracters while we’re actually doing the presentation part of the lesson. One of the important things is that we don’t want students to memorize the algorithm or the procedures while they’re using the manipulatives. It really is just to help them understand conceptually. That doesn’t mean that kids are automatically going to understand conceptually or be able to make that bridge between using the concrete manipulatives into them being able to solve the problems. For some kids, it is difficult to use the manipulatives. That’s not how they learn, and so we don’t want to force kids to have to use manipulatives if it’s not something that is helpful for them. So we have to remember that manipulatives are one way to think about teaching math.
I think part of the reason that some teachers don’t use them is because it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of organization, and they also feel that students get too reliant on using manipulatives. One way to think about using manipulatives is that you do it a couple of lessons when you’re teaching a new concept, and then take those away so that students are able to do just the computation part of it. It is true we can’t walk around life with manipulatives in our hands. And I think one of the other reasons that a lot of schools or teachers don’t use manipulatives is because they’re very expensive. And so it’s very helpful if all of the teachers in the school can pool resources and have a manipulative room where teachers can go check out manipulatives so that it’s not so expensive. Teachers have to know how to use them, and that takes a lot of practice.
Table of Contents
Representation in art refers to the portrayal or depiction of subjects, objects, or ideas in a visual form. It is the artist’s interpretation of reality, whether it be realistic, abstract, or somewhere in between.
Representation can take many forms, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, and more. It is a way for artists to communicate their thoughts, emotions, and perspectives to the viewer.
Throughout history, representation in art has evolved and changed in response to cultural, societal, and technological advancements. In ancient civilizations, art was often used to depict religious or mythological stories, with a focus on realism and detail.
During the Renaissance period, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo revolutionized representation in art by incorporating perspective, light, and shadow to create more lifelike images. This period also saw the rise of portraiture as a popular form of representation.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, movements such as Impressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism challenged traditional notions of representation in art, pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of depicting the world.
Cultural and societal influences play a significant role in shaping representation in art. Different cultures have unique artistic traditions and styles that reflect their values, beliefs, and histories.
For example, traditional African art often focuses on symbolism and abstraction, while Western art tends to prioritize realism and perspective. These cultural differences impact how artists choose to represent their subjects and ideas.
Societal issues such as politics, gender, race, and class also influence representation in art. Artists may use their work to challenge stereotypes, advocate for social change, or highlight marginalized voices within society.
The artist plays a crucial role in determining how subjects are represented in art. They make decisions about composition, color, style, and technique that shape the viewer’s interpretation of the artwork.
Artists have the power to challenge conventions, provoke thought, and evoke emotion through their representations. They can choose to depict reality as it is, or they can distort, abstract, or reimagine it in new and unexpected ways.
In the contemporary art world, representation has become increasingly diverse and experimental. Artists are exploring new mediums, techniques, and concepts to push the boundaries of traditional representation.
Some artists are using technology, such as virtual reality and digital media, to create immersive and interactive representations. Others are incorporating performance, installation, and multimedia elements into their work to challenge traditional notions of representation.
Representation in art has a profound impact on society, shaping how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us. Art can challenge stereotypes, inspire empathy, and provoke critical thinking about social issues.
By representing diverse perspectives, experiences, and identities, artists can promote inclusivity, diversity, and social justice. Art has the power to spark conversations, foster understanding, and create positive change within society.
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Visual representation.
The study and conceptualization of visual representation were primarily associated with art and art history prior to the twentieth century, and drew on the analytical tools of iconology with a focus on the artist’s intention and perception. With the advent of semiotics, followed by other theories of the visual, the twentieth century marked a broadening in conceptions of visual representation from the realm of art to the realm of the everyday. Studies of visual representation have expanded to include the images that surround people every-day. This includes studies of images in film (Metz 1990), the use of photography (Sontag 1979), advertising (Goffman 1979), scientific imagery (Latour & Woolgar 1986), learning and development (Kress 1996), and the representation of social identities (Hall 1997). This expansion of the domain of the visual has influenced how visual representation is theorized and approached, including a shift in focus from the image to contexts of production and viewers. Today a range of theories is applied to understanding the visual, including theories drawn from anthropology, art history, cognitive psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, psychoanalytical theories, and sociology.
Studies of visual representation have shown that the visual is central to the cultural construction of social life. People’s everyday experience of the world, socially, physically, and psychologically, and their production of meaning are mediated by the visual. Visual representation is not only a matter of how people experience the world; it is also crucial in how the world itself is constructed. The twenty-first century is marked by a plethora of imaging and visual technologies, and in contemporary western society everyday life is saturated with the images that these technologies make available. Studies of late twentieth century culture have noted a turn to the visual (Mitchell 1995; Mirzoeff 1999) in which the modern world has become a visual phenomenon; a world that conflates looking, seeing, and knowing (Jenks 1995) to become a “vision machine” created through new visualizing technologies in which people are all caught (Virilio 1994).
Visual representation is a complex concept that connects with fundamental questions of “reality,” ideology and power, agency, as well as signification and the procedures and potentials for interpreting meaning. There is, however, a general agreement that the meaning of an image is “made” at three sites: (1) the site of the image, (2) the site of production, and (3) the viewer interaction. The meaning of visual representation is realized in the interplay across these three sites or factors.
The concept of visual codes and conventions (socially agreed ways of doing something) is often employed in the analysis of visual representations. Semiotics proposes that there is a wide range of visual, pictorial, material, and symbolic signs that are conventional in the way that they simplify, and yet bear some kind of resemblance to, an object or quality in the “real” world that they signify. This includes abstract signs that become associated through agreement into convention with the object or quality represented. These conventions are extended to a semiotic “code” to form an extended system of semiotic signs. Social semiotics uses the concept of “semiotic resource” rather than code. This serves to foreground the work of the sign-maker in interpreting and assembling semiotic resources.
What is depicted in an image and how it is represented are an obvious starting point for understanding the process of visual representation. Visual codes can, for example, be designed to realize visual narratives or conceptual categories, each of which serves to connect or disconnect depicted elements in different ways. That is, the way these relationships are represented marks (and establishes) what belongs and does not belong together, who acts on what, and so on. These represented relations are realized through a range of codes, including the representation of depicted elements, compositional arrangements, and analytical structures. Visual representations also work by using and representing many of the visual codes that are employed in lived rather than textual forms of communication. In this way visual representations can carry all the sign systems and codes (dress, style, body language, and so on) that can “make” the lived world meaningful. For instance, Goffman’s Gender advertisements (1979) offers a classic exemplar of how depicted elements, compositional structures, posture, and gaze contribute to the production and regulation of gendered identifies.
In addition to their “content,” visual representations position the viewer to look in particular ways. In this way an image can be understood as “telling” viewers who they are and where they are. In doing so the image realizes the ideological design of the viewer’s relationship with the depicted object, person, or event. The viewer can refuse to adopt the viewing position offered by an image, but nonetheless it is present.
In order to get at the meaning of an image, the ways in which the meanings and uses of images are regulated by institutions of production, distribution, and consumption need to be considered. The economics, motives, and intentions of those who produce and disseminate visual representations are aspects of the site of production. That is, visual representations need to be understood in context because these social factors and experiences are not separate from the signifying systems of the visual; they do not exist in an abstract realm – they actually structure it.
The production of an image is therefore integral to its use and meaning. Technologies of production, in particular new technologies, are key to the question of the relationship between visual representation and “reality.” Technologies have changed what it is possible to see and how these entities are seen, through the magnification of detail, slow motion, capturing images that escape “natural” vision, and the changing context of viewing.
The viewer, looking, and subjectivity are key themes in theorizing and understanding visual representation. Understanding the agency of the viewer demands a shift of analytical emphasis away from the image or text to the social identities and experiences of the viewer. This necessarily connects with the context of viewing as part of the production of meaning. From this perspective, meaning is understood as constituted in the articulation between the viewer and the viewed, between the power of the image to signify and the viewer’s capacity to interpret meaning. Visual representations work (mean) by producing effects each time they are looked at. However, the image also depends for its effects on a certain way of seeing.
Asking who the viewer is raises the question of the alignment and identification of their points of view and perspective with those of the maker of the image. In other words, both the maker and the reader of a visual representation are involved in the process of making sense ( designing meaning ). Seeing the viewer as agentive means that the power of a visual sign remains a potential until the viewer engages with it. The parameters within which interpretations are made are shaped by the viewer’s social position and subjective capacity in conjunction with the conventions and codes of a visual representation.
The mediating effect of contexts of viewing is especially relevant for visual representation in the twenty-first century, when images are mobile across different media and contexts. For example, reading a magazine at home, driving by a billboard on the road, and watching an advert at home on television or with friends in the cinema all call forth different practices of viewing. The context of viewing contributes to realizing different practices of looking and interpreting.
In summary, visual representation can be understood as a cycle of production , circulation, and consumption, a cycle in which visual representations become a site of struggle over what something means.
Signification and how to theorize the relationship between referent, signifier, and signified are central to the way visual representation is conceptualized. Current theories of perception, structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism theorize their relationship in different ways. This influences how the power of visual representation is understood to shape people’s experience of the world, what the world is, and what it can be.
Models of perception are concerned with image-making as an internal psychological process, that is, with the perceptions and sensations in the mind of the image-maker and the viewer. Here the goal is the perfect reproduction of reality. This places reality as external to representation, in which the referent “exists” and the signifier reflects it.
From this perspective an image is a transparent window through which the viewer can connect directly (via the signifier) to an original object or presence (the referent). This presents a notion of the image as autonomous and as containing within itself an inherent meaning. This conception of visual signification and image-making as cognition, perception, and a kind of optical truth severs the connection between image and society and fails to account for the relationship between image and power.
In the twentieth century semiotics began to interrogate the elements and structures of systems of representation, language, and the visual. Traditional semiotics (e.g., Saussure 1986) views meaning as consisting of two parts: the signifier and the signified. On the one hand, the signifier denotes a sign’s literal meaning: that is, who or what is depicted. On the other hand, the signified connotes a sign’s associated meanings: that is, the cultural ideas and values associated with the objects depicted. Structuralism asserts that although we depend on the relationship between these two parts to produce meaning, it is an arbitrary relationship established through cultural convention. This presents language and other systems of meaning as self-contained structures, a system of arbitrary and differential signs that do not name or reflect thoughts or concepts that pre-exist it, but rather actively construct them.
Structuralism attempts to understand the social and cultural forces that motivate representation, rather than accepting representation as given or natural. This brings the relationship between referent, signifier, and signified into a social relationship. Viewing is repositioned as a social process that involves the unfolding of meaning through the “activation” of visual codes of recognition, codes learnt through the viewer’s interaction in the social cultural world, rather than an individual physiological and cognitive process.
Locating visual representation in the social domain in this way opens up the necessity of thinking of visual representation as discursive work, work that produces society. This reconnects images with the social and in doing so locates image in relation to power. However, structuralism has been criticized for being ahistorical and for being deterministic in the way that it privileges structure over individual human agency. In this way it is inadequate in theorizing the potential of human agency to resist, challenge, and change systems of representation. Peirce (1991) brought human agency into semiosis by his assertion that sign-making involves the cooperation of a sign, its object, and its interpretant. In other words, for Pierce signs cannot exist independently of a subject to interpret them. This shifts attention from the idea of meaning as embedded in text to a concern for the interactive process of meaning-making .
Poststructuralism developed in the 1960s as a critical response to the assumptions of structuralism. Poststructuralism rejects the structuralist notion that there is a consistent structure to a text and argues instead that these structures and systems that underlie a text are themselves a cultural product. Poststructuralism argues that the systems of knowledge that produce it, as well as the text itself, need to be analyzed in order to understand the meaning of a text. In other words, poststructuralism can be seen as the study of the production of knowledge (Worth 1981).
Poststructuralism argues that the author is not the primary source of the meaning of a text (Barthes 1977) and that there is a multiplicity of meanings to any text. Decentering the authority of the author in this way serves to open up the meaning of a text to the work of the reader and other sources for meaning, such as cultural norms and historical context. Placing the reader at the center of meaning-making in this way asserts that no text has one meaning, purpose, or existence. In addition to demanding a rethinking of texts and representations, poststructuralism also destabilizes the notion of the “self.” From this perspective the concept of the self as a single and coherent entity is a fictional construct.
Social semiotics rejects the concept of code as too rigid and static and instead uses the concept of semiotic resource (Hodge & Kress 1988). A focus on semiotic resources serves to recognize the social, historical, and cultural character of visual codes and the ideological work of signs. From a poststructuralist perspective the act of reading a sign is repositioned as the act of sign-making, of giving meaning to a signified. That is, the reader is the signmaker and signs are constantly remade and transformed through people’s engagement with them. In this way, the denotative (the signified) can be seen as always connotative, no matter how literal its relationship to the “real” world.
The relationship of the referent with the signifier and signified is significantly “loosened” in poststructuralism- and the term “signifier” is preferred to “sign” to indicate that no single meaning is secured to a word, and that the possibility of a full and secure meaning is always deferred (Derrida 1978). In other words, meaning is never as fully “fixed” as structuralism appears to suggest. This attempts to move away from the linking of representation with the idea of reconstituting the missing “presence,” the original source “content” of the empirical form of a representation.
Postmodernism argues that the economic and social conditions of late capitalism, in particular globalization and new technologies, have led to a decentralized, fragmented, and media-dominated society saturated with images. Postmodernism rejects the idea of “representation” in favor of “ simulation ” to emphasize the constructed character of signs. Simulations are understood as simulacra of the “real” that presuppose and precede the “real.” These hyperreal symbols and signs do not have an original, stable referent or a source of meaning. In this way postmoderism breaks the relationship between seeing and knowing. Baudrillard (1983) argues that society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that what people understand as “reality” is actually a simulation of reality. From this perspective, images are to be fundamentally mistrusted because they claim to signal a referent that they have become detached or severed from.
Postmodernism is a contested term. Whether or not it is a distinct historical period or an extension of modernism remains a matter of debate. There is agreement, however, that the conditions of late capitalism have realized some of the aspects encompassed in postmodernist theory, such as the breakdown of traditional structures (e.g., genre and other stylistic forms) and classificatory categories. This conceptualization of visual representation refutes the possibility of representation as a mimetic reflection of “reality.”
The visual produces as well as represents culture, constituting (and constituted by) its relations of power and difference, so that cultures of everyday life are entwined with practices of representation. The continuous circulation and repetition of images presented as the norm or reality in visual media actively define social and cultural norms as fixed and natural. In the ways that people are depicted, vision is complicit with power and discipline through surveillance. Understanding visual representation as embodying and constituting ideologies (the system of thoughts and beliefs that determine the subjects action and behavior) shows how ways of investing meaning in the world are realized in visual representations.
The theorization and study of identities is one example of a significant area that has shown the potential of visual representation in understanding social and cultural phenomena (e.g., Hall 1997). Work has shown how racial, gendered, and other identities are visually represented, recycled, and contested. Visual discourses work to govern and empower particular understandings of a subject through their representation. Building on the work of Foucault (1977), identity theorists have examined visual representation as a part of the regulatory force of culture (sets of practices, cultural norms, meanings, and values) as they apply to the production of identities.
The cultural practices of looking and seeing are (like other social practices) organized around the founding principles of the articulation of difference . Looking at how representations attempt to fix difference offers a way of conceptualizing the complex relationship of power and representation. The practices of representation can be employed, for instance, to mark gender and racial difference. The “visible” signifiers of race and gender on the body can be called on to make these differences seem real and therefore true. The differences we can “see” appear to ground their “truth” beyond the social and historical construction of race and gender into nature and therefore to be unchangeable. The question of how the “other” is produced and reproduced through visual representation is central to postcolonial theories. The idea that discipline and control can be achieved through relations of looking and the knowledge and power that vision allows over what is seen is central to Foucault’s work and postcolonial theories.
Visual representations are, then, a discursive means by which a dominant group works to establish and maintain hegemonic power within a culture in which meaning is constantly reproduced and remade as signs are articulated and rearticulated. Images are thus a site of struggle for meaning , a site of power, and constitutive of society. Cultural production therefore has real political and ideological effects. As a result, visual representation has also been taken up as a potential tool for resistance and the remaking – reimaging – of society.
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Graphical representation
The concept of “representation” captures the signs that stand in for and take the place of something else [ 5 ]. Visual representation, in particular, refers to the special case when these signs are visual (as opposed to textual, mathematical, etc.). On the other hand, there is no limit on what may be (visually) represented, which may range from abstract concepts to concrete objects in the real world or data items.
In addition to the above, however, the term “representation” is often overloaded and used to imply the actual process of connecting the two worlds of the original items and of their representatives. Typically, the context determines quite clearly which of the two meanings is intended in each case, hence, the term is used for both without further explanation.
Underneath any visual representation lies a mapping between the set of items that are being represented and the set of visual elements that are used to represent them, i.e., to...
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Picture this. A chaotic world of abstract concepts and complex data, like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Each piece, a different variable, a unique detail.
Alone, they’re baffling, nearly indecipherable.
But together? They’re a masterpiece of visual information, a detailed illustration.
American data pioneer Edward Tufte , a notable figure in the graphics press, believed that the art of seeing is not limited to the physical objects around us. He stated, “The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly – to develop strategies of seeing and showing.”
It’s in this context that we delve into the world of data visualization. This is a process where you create visual representations that foster understanding and enhance decision making.
It’s the transformation of data into visual formats. The information could be anything from theoretical frameworks and research findings to word problems. Or anything in-between. And it has the power to change the way you learn, work, and more.
And with the help of modern technology, you can take advantage of data visualization easier than ever today.
Think of visuals, a smorgasbord of graphical representation, images, pictures, and drawings. Now blend these with ideas, abstract concepts, and data.
You get visual representations . A powerful, potent blend of communication and learning.
As a more formal definition, visual representation is the use of images to represent different types of data and ideas.
They’re more than simply a picture. Visual representations organize information visually , creating a deeper understanding and fostering conceptual understanding. These can be concrete objects or abstract symbols or forms, each telling a unique story. And they can be used to improve understanding everywhere, from a job site to an online article. University professors can even use them to improve their teaching.
But this only scratches the surface of what can be created via visual representation.
Graphs, spider diagrams, cluster diagrams – the list is endless!
Each type of visual representation has its specific uses. A mind map template can help you create a detailed illustration of your thought process. It illustrates your ideas or data in an engaging way and reveals how they connect.
Here are a handful of different types of data visualization tools that you can begin using right now.
Spider diagrams , or mind maps, are the master web-weavers of visual representation.
They originate from a central concept and extend outwards like a spider’s web. Different ideas or concepts branch out from the center area, providing a holistic view of the topic.
This form of representation is brilliant for showcasing relationships between concepts, fostering a deeper understanding of the subject at hand.
As champions of grouping and classifying information, cluster diagrams are your go-to tools for usability testing or decision making. They help you group similar ideas together, making it easier to digest and understand information.
They’re great for exploring product features, brainstorming solutions, or sorting out ideas.
Pie charts are the quintessential representatives of quantitative information.
They are a type of visual diagrams that transform complex data and word problems into simple symbols. Each slice of the pie is a story, a visual display of the part-to-whole relationship.
Whether you’re presenting survey results, market share data, or budget allocation, a pie chart offers a straightforward, easily digestible visual representation.
If you’re dealing with comparative data or need a visual for data analysis, bar charts or graphs come to the rescue.
Bar graphs represent different variables or categories against a quantity, making them perfect for representing quantitative information. The vertical or horizontal bars bring the data to life, translating numbers into visual elements that provide context and insights at a glance.
1. deeper understanding via visual perception.
Visual representations aren’t just a feast for the eyes; they’re food for thought. They offer a quick way to dig down into more detail when examining an issue.
They mold abstract concepts into concrete objects, breathing life into the raw, quantitative information. As you glimpse into the world of data through these visualization techniques , your perception deepens.
You no longer just see the data; you comprehend it, you understand its story. Complex data sheds its mystifying cloak, revealing itself in a visual format that your mind grasps instantly. It’s like going from a two dimensional to a three dimensional picture of the world.
Navigating through different variables and relationships can feel like walking through a labyrinth. But visualize these with a spider diagram or cluster diagram, and the path becomes clear. Visual representation is one of the most efficient decision making techniques .
Visual representations illuminate the links and connections, presenting a fuller picture. It’s like having a compass in your decision-making journey, guiding you toward the correct answer.
Whether you’re presenting research findings, sharing theoretical frameworks, or revealing historical examples, visual representations are your ace. They equip you with a new language, empowering you to convey your message compellingly.
From the conference room to the university lecture hall, they enhance your communication and teaching skills, propelling your professional development. Try to create a research mind map and compare it to a plain text document full of research documentation and see the difference.
What is data visualization if not the mediator between data analysis and understanding? It’s more than an actual process; it’s a bridge.
It takes you from the shores of raw, complex data to the lands of comprehension and insights. With visualization techniques, such as the use of simple symbols or detailed illustrations, you can navigate through this bridge effortlessly.
Imagine a teaching setting where concepts are not just told but shown. Where students don’t just listen to word problems but see them represented in charts and graphs. This is what visual representations bring to learning environments.
They transform traditional methods into interactive learning experiences, enabling students to grasp complex ideas and understand relationships more clearly. The result? An enriched learning experience that fosters conceptual understanding.
In a world brimming with abstract concepts, visual representations are our saving grace. They serve as translators, decoding these concepts into a language we can understand.
Let’s say you’re trying to grasp a theoretical framework. Reading about it might leave you puzzled. But see it laid out in a spider diagram or a concept map, and the fog lifts. With its different variables clearly represented, the concept becomes tangible.
Visual representations simplify the complex, convert the abstract into concrete, making the inscrutable suddenly crystal clear. It’s the power of transforming word problems into visual displays, a method that doesn’t just provide the correct answer. It also offers a deeper understanding.
Ready to get creative? Let’s make a cluster diagram.
First, choose your central idea or problem. This goes in the center area of your diagram. Next, think about related topics or subtopics. Draw lines from the central idea to these topics. Each line represents a relationship.
While you can create a picture like this by drawing, there’s a better way.
Mindomo is a mind mapping tool that will enable you to create visuals that represent data quickly and easily. It provides a wide range of templates to kick-start your diagramming process. And since it’s an online site, you can access it from anywhere.
With a mind map template, creating a cluster diagram becomes an effortless process. This is especially the case since you can edit its style, colors, and more to your heart’s content. And when you’re done, sharing is as simple as clicking a button.
To wrap it up, visual representations are not just about presenting data or information. They are about creating a shared understanding, facilitating learning, and promoting effective communication. Whether it’s about defining a complex process or representing an abstract concept, visual representations have it all covered. And with tools like Mindomo , creating these visuals is as easy as pie.
In the end, visual representation isn’t just about viewing data, it’s about seeing, understanding, and interacting with it. It’s about immersing yourself in the world of abstract concepts, transforming them into tangible visual elements. It’s about seeing relationships between ideas in full color. It’s a whole new language that opens doors to a world of possibilities.
The correct answer to ‘what is data visualization?’ is simple. It’s the future of learning, teaching, and decision-making.
Keep it smart, simple, and creative! The Mindomo Team
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Place representation.
How places may be represented in a variety of different forms such as advertising copy, tourist agency material, local art exhibitions in diverse media (e.g. film, photography, art, story, song etc.) that often give contrasting images to that presented formally or statistically such as cartography and census data.
Place representation is how a place is portrayed or seen in society. We have already examined the idea that place representation can be manipulated by placemaking agencies via regeneration, reimaging and rebranding. The wider media, that is all means of communication including television, film, photography, art, newspapers, books, songs etc. can all affect place perception.
QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE DATA
We can represent places in a variety of different forms such as advertising copy, tourist agency material, local art exhibitions in diverse media (e.g. film, photography, art, story, song etc.). These forms are QUALITATIVE DATA - information that is non-numerical and used in a relatively unstructured and open-ended way. Qualitative data can be observed and recorded. It is descriptive information, which often comes from interviews, focus groups or artistic descriptions such as photographs or paintings. We can argue that this type of data is more SUBJECTIVE, based on or influenced by personal feelings, by our opinions and our tastes.
We can also use formal or statistical methods such as cartography and census data. These are QUANTITATIVE DATA - these are data about numeric variables, things that can be quantified and verified and statistically manipulated. We can use these to provide contrasting images to that presented by media images. We can argue that this type of data is more OBJECTIVE, it is not influenced by personal feelings or opinions. We consider and represent places factually.
INVESTIGATING PLACES
The exam board would like you to explore a range of different types of both qualitative and quantitative data to explore your near and distant places. This is because both methods have strengths and limitations and influence our place understanding and sense of place in different ways.
It is also important that as well as research your places via these data sources you also visit and spend time in your places. Your distant place will be alien to you, can you develop a sense of place for it? Your local place will be all too familiar to you, can you look at it in a different more objective manner and try to find out new things about it. What factors make your local place the way it is?
Quantitative Data methods
Mapping or Cartography
Maps are simply representations of a place that display the located characteristics of it. Can carry bias such as distortions of area. You need to be analytical and critical when using maps as sources as they can misrepresent reality. The London Tube map is a classic example;
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Underground_Zone_1_Highlighted.svg
Source: https://tfl.gov.uk/maps/track/tube
As you can see, the Geographic reality of zone 1 of the London Tube does not match that of the Tube map we use to navigate our way around it. The official tube map is more useful to people, even though it is inaccurate. The problem is that this distorts our perception of place via the map!
The Mercator map projection of the Earth is another case. It has been around for over 500 years but because the linear scale of a Mercator map increases with latitude, it distorts the size of geographical objects far from the equator and conveys a distorted perception of the overall geometry of the planet. A more equal area projection of the world is the Galls Peter projection. Google Maps In a more modern sense, we need to be cautious of using maps on our smart phones.
Gall Peters Projection |
Mercator projection |
Google maps is incredibly useful, but like any search engine filters our searches and points us towards their partner organizations of advertisers first. This distorts our view of place and might mean we are missing out on other places that would be worth visiting!
To examine places changing over time, you should consider using https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/ . This brilliant website from the National Library of Scotland allows you to look at a modern satellite image and contrast it to old maps – thus being able to see how PLACES CHANGE. For example, the maps can show changes in a settlement such as new housing estates, giving you an idea of the scale of the change. You should also be able to identify changes in economic activity.
Museums may also have historic maps of places, opposite is a fantastic 3D model of the Heaton and Jesmond part of Newcastle upon Tyne in from the Discovery Museum. It shows large areas of this part of the city as of yet undeveloped and old industries such as coal mines. It is a 42 ft long model of Tyneside built for the 1929 North East Coast Exhibition, showing every bridge, dock, shipyard, factory, coalmine, railway, park, public building, etc.
Finally, consider that maps in the past were often hand-drawn and therefore open to subjectivity. Ordnance Survey (OS) maps limit what is shown, it is not possible to always be able to tell land-use and there may be no indication of what buildings are used for. Finally, maps are not always updated that frequently.
USING STATISTICS - The census
The Census is a once-in-a-decade survey that gives us the most accurate estimate of all the people and households in England and Wales. 1 It has taken place since 1801 and is the most complete record of population we have for the UK. The data for the census is collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) who produce statistics at different scales, from local ward level up to national statistics.
The census has numerous positives and negatives as a data source;
Many people don’t complete the census, so it is an incomplete record. The 2011 Census achieved its overall target response rate of 94 per cent of the usually resident population of England and Wales Local authority or council websites Another good source of statistical information for investigation economic change and social inequalities are your local council websites. As with the example below, they can provide a huge range of statistical information on a range of variables collected from many different data sources.
Don’t forget, statistics can give you a skewed idea, for example census data can suggest that everyone was living in poverty if you only look at a narrow range of results. Recall the phrase “ lies, damned lies, and statistics! ”
Qualitative data sources – paintings and photos
It is also possible to use different artistic sources to show changing characteristics of the place under study. Paintings can be used to show historical change for periods of time when we did not have photography. The painting below is of Keswick in the Lake District, many of the buildings remain including Moot Hall in the center. The image can be used to gain an ancient sense of place for the area. A former teacher has used this painting as an inspiration to research the people can characters in it, further developing her sense of place. 2
Keswick Main Street by Joseph Brown, at the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery 3
In modern times, paintings can be used as part of place making be it legal or illegal. Below you can see a modern painting in the Ouseburn, on an arch under a road bridge.
The message “A n ancient place of lead and stone and steel and scrap. Sluice gates, water, tunnels, mud, artists, beast and birds. Where the future grows and shakes it wings ” is a place message linking to the Ouseburn Valley’s industrial past but also a nod at the artistic and cultural future of this regenerated area. The image to the right has been MANIPULATED! I cropped out the cars and industrial units, and recoloured the image. What does that do to your perception of this place? It is also now possible to use before and after photos to show how characteristics of areas and places have changed due factors such as immigration or economic change. Indeed, photographs can give an accurate representation of change that we are able to visualize. We must also be cautious however, photos can easily by cropped, manipulated or “Photoshopped”, this editing of photographs via software on mobile of computer devices can manipulate the representation of place. Many artistic sources need a consideration of the intended audience and subsequent subjectivity. Postcards are a good example of this, they are intended to show people a place in its “best light”, so do not provide a best representation of a place.
Poetry has long been used to describe and develop a sense of place via the written word. E.g. “To the river Greta” develops a sense of place about Keswick in the Lake District, by William Wordsworth. In contrast, the more modern poem about “Ouseburn” evokes real emotions about this valley as a changing place.
Music can also represent people’s lived experiences of change over time. There are many musical sources you can use to develop a sense of place for a location. The video below from the brilliant Cattle and Cane is a homage to my home town of Middlesbrough
Plaques and historical records could also be used and will provide excellent background detail for any place study. A collection of these can be seen below for both Newcastle upon Tyne and Keswick (click on the image to enlarge it);
Interviews can also generate detailed insights about a person’s sense of place or perception of place providing first hand experiences. It would be worth exploring the work of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a Finnish artist who took photographs of people and areas of Byker in Newcastle upon Tyne.
1 – ONS (2018) What is the census? accessed on 19th May 2020 at https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/aboutthecensus
2 -Cumberland and Westmorland Herald (2013) Picture is providing glimpse into history of Keswick for former teacher. Accessed at https://www.cwherald.com/a/archive/picture-is-providing-glimpse-into-history-of-keswick-for-former-teacher.410816.html
3 - Joseph Brown (1870) - Keswick Main Street. Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. Accessed 19th May at https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/keswick-main-street-143477
4 - William Wordsworth (1770–1850), To the River Greta, near Keswick, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes. England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79. Accessed at https://www.bartleby.com/270/1/183.html
5 – McMillan, Ian (2016), Ouseburn. Accessed from the Evening Chronicle 19th May 2020 at https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/part-newcastle-earned-poem-ian-12338263
©2015 Cool Geography
To what extent and how do the media – press, broadcasting or social – influence our perceptions of places and brands, and as such their image and reputation ? With what consequences?
Media representations play a crucial role in the place image context. Perceptions of places, including countries or tourist destinations, are influenced by the ways in which they are represented by the media ( Boisen et al., 2011).
While images are constructed and communicated through multiple channels, including direct experience, word-of-mouth and audio-visual media (Hudson & Brent-Ritchie, 2006), the mass media are one of the main means by which information is disseminated ( Anholt , 2010).
The media play “a major part in informing consumers’ images of destinations…either directly in terms of being read, heard or watched, or indirectly through the advice given by friends, relatives and other sources.” (Hall, 2002, pp. 458-459)
Remote places in particular depend on media coverage to become known to the outside world ( Avraham , 2000; Avraham & Ketter, 2008; Choi, Lehto, & Morrison, 2007; Dinnie , 2008; Kotler & Gertner , 2011).
What is more, the media’s portrayal of distant places is mostly accepted as their “true” nature by those not living there (Adoni & Mane, 1984; Avraham, 2000; Avraham & Ketter, 2008; Burgess & Gold, 1985; Gold, 1980; Pocock & Hudson, 1978; Relph, 1976).
In this regard, the media also function as a primary source for stereotypes and images associated with distant places (Dahlgren & Chakrapani, 1982; Gold, 1994). Media reporting can also turn remotely located places into areas of possible concern for people living thousands of kilometers away (Chouliaraki, 2006; Cottle, 2009a, 2009b).
Yet, the ability of places to become known through the media is limited by the tendency of the media in many countries to exclude peripheral regions (Avraham, 2003; Lahav & Avraham, 2008).
Regarding the amount and nature of media coverage of places, Avraham and Ketter (2008, p. 30; see also Avraham, 2000) – drawing on Manheim and Albritton (1984) – have proposed that places either:
Carroll and McCombs (2003) offer some guiding principles that help understand the influence of news coverage on (corporate) reputation:
Although those principles were developed with business organizations in mind, they can be considered equally valid for understanding the significance of media reputation for place or national brands. In both situations, brand managers are, at the best, outsiders listening in, if not completely disconnected from such conversations (Humlen, 2012).
Controlling media-constructed reputation of a place is difficult, if not impossible (Murphy, 2010). The reputation an organisation or place enjoys in the media develops over time through a complex social process (Deephouse, 2000, p. 1098); it is constantly challenged and evolving (Murphy, 2010).
Apart from media representations of places being subject to sociopolitical influences beyond the immediate control of places, they also cannot entirely control editorial decisions or other news making characteristics (Avraham & Ketter, 2008).
This is not to say that a place’s reputation (coverage) in the media shouldn’t be closely monitored. Quite the contrary:
Isolated negatives in media coverage should not be dismissed as irrelevant, as “these dissonances may signal nascent patterns that, when they become obvious, may have assumed an immovable logic of their own” (Murphy, 2010, p. 233).
Adoni, H. , & Mane, S. (1984). Media and the social construction of reality: Toward an integration of theory and research. Communication Research , 11(3), 323-340. doi: 10.1177/009365084011003001
Anholt, S. (2010). Places: Identity, image and reputation. Houndsmills, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.
Avraham, E. (2000). Cities and their news media images. Cities , 17(5), 363-370. doi: 10.1016/S0264-2751(00)00032-9
Avraham, E. (2003). Behind media marginality: Coverage of social groups and places in the Israeli press. Langham, MD: Lexington Books.
Avraham, E. , & Ketter, E. (2008). Media strategies for marketing places in crisis: Improving the image of cities, countries and tourist destinations. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Inc.
Boisen, M. , Terlouw, K. , & Bouke, v.G. (2011). The selective nature of place branding and the layering of spatial identities. Journal of Place Management and Development , 4(2), 135-147. doi: 10.1108/17538331111153151
Burgess, J. , & Gold, J.R. (Eds.). (1985). Geography, the media and popular culture. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Carroll, C.E. , & McCombs, M. (2003). Agenda-setting effects of business news on the public’s images and opinions about major corporations. Corporate Reputation Review , 6(1), 36-46. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.crr.1540188
Choi, S. , Lehto, X.Y. , & Morrison, A.M. (2007). Destination image representation on the web: Content analysis of Macau travel related websites. Tourism Management , 28(1), 118-129. doi: doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2006.03.002
Chouliaraki, L. (2006). The spectatorship of suffering. London, United Kingdom: Sage Publications.
Cottle, S. (2009). Global crises in the news: Staging news wars, disasters, and climate change. International Journal of Communication , 3, 494-516.
Cottle, S. (2009). Global crisis reporting: Journalism in the global age. Maidenhead, United Kingdom: Open University Press.
Dahlgren, P. , & Chakrapani, S. (1982). The third world on T.V. news: Western way of seeing the ‘other’. In W. Adams (Ed.), Television coverage of international affairs (pp. 45-62). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Deephouse, D.L. (2000). Media reputation as a strategic resource: An integration of mass communication and resource-based theories. Journal of Management , 26(6), 1091-1112.
Dinnie, K. (2008). Nation branding: Concepts, issues, practice. Oxford, United Kingdom: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Gilpin, D. (2010). Organizational image construction in a fragmented online media environment. Journal of Public Relations Research , 22(3), 265-287. doi: 10.1080/10627261003614393
Gold, J.R. (1980). An introduction to behavioral geography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Gold, J.R. (1994). Locating the message: Place promotion as image communication. In J.R. Gold & S.V. Ward (Eds.), Place promotion: The use of publicity and marketing to sell towns and regions (pp. 19-38). Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Hall, C.M. (2002). Travel safety, terrorism and the media: The significance of the issue-attention-cycle. Current Issues in Tourism , 5(5), 458-466. doi: 10.1080/13683500208667935
Hudson, S. , & Brent-Ritchie, J.R. (2006). Promoting destinations via film tourism: An empirical identification of supporting marketing initiatives. Journal of Travel Research , 44(4), 387-396. doi: 10.1177/0047287506286720
Humlen, A. (2012). Why ‘humanizing’ brands begins with a state of mind. Emotional Branding Alliance Blog. Retrieved March 19th, 2012, from http://www.socialvoicebranding.com/why-humanizing-brands-begins-with-a-state-of-mind/
Kotler, P. , & Gertner, D. (2011). A place marketing and place branding perspective revisited. In N. Morgan, A. Pritchard & R. Pride (Eds.), Destination brands: Managing place reputation (3rd ed., pp. 33-54). Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Lahav, T. , & Avraham, E. (2008). Public relations for peripheral places and their national media coverage patterns: The Israeli case. Public Relations Review , 34(3), 230-236. doi: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2008.05.002
Manheim, J.B. , & Albritton, R.B. (1984). Changing national images: International public relations and media agenda setting. The American Political Science Review , 78(3), 641-657.
Masters, E. (2010). Brand Aotearoa? Deep origin marketing of functional foods and other natural products of New Zealand origin. (MBA Master thesis), University of Liverpool. Link to Pdf file
Murphy, P. (2010). The intractability of reputation: Media coverage as a complex system in the case of Martha Stewart. Journal of Public Relations Research , 22(2), 209-237. doi: 10.1080/10627261003601648
Pocock, D. , & Hudson, R. (1978). Images of the urban environment. London, UK: Macmillan.
Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London, UK: Pion.
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How can you design computer displays that are as meaningful as possible to human viewers? Answering this question requires understanding of visual representation - the principles by which markings on a surface are made and interpreted. The analysis in this article addresses the most important principles of visual representation for screen design, introduced with examples from the early history of graphical user interfaces . In most cases, these principles have been developed and elaborated within whole fields of study and professional skill - typography , cartography, engineering and architectural draughting, art criticism and semiotics. Improving on the current conventions requires serious skill and understanding. Nevertheless, interaction designers should be able, when necessary, to invent new visual representations.
Introduction to Visual Representation by Alan Blackwell
Alan Blackwell on applying theories of Visual Representation
For many years, computer displays resembled paper documents. This does not mean that they were simplistic or unreasonably constrained. On the contrary, most aspects of modern industrial society have been successfully achieved using the representational conventions of paper, so those conventions seem to be powerful ones. Information on paper can be structured using tabulated columns, alignment, indentation and emphasis, borders and shading. All of those were incorporated into computer text displays. Interaction conventions, however, were restricted to operations of the typewriter rather than the pencil. Each character typed would appear at a specific location. Locations could be constrained, like filling boxes on a paper form. And shortcut command keys could be defined using onscreen labels or paper overlays. It is not text itself, but keyboard interaction with text that is limited and frustrating compared to what we can do with paper (Sellen and Harper 2001).
But despite the constraints on keyboard interaction, most information on computer screens is still represented as text. Conventions of typography and graphic design help us to interpret that text as if it were on a page, and human readers benefit from many centuries of refinement in text document design. Text itself, including many writing systems as well as specialised notations such as algebra, is a visual representation that has its own research and educational literature. Documents that contain a mix of bordered or coloured regions containing pictures, text and diagrammatic elements can be interpreted according to the conventions of magazine design, poster advertising, form design, textbooks and encyclopaedias. Designers of screen representations should take care to properly apply the specialist knowledge of those graphic and typographic professions. Position on the page, use of typographic grids, and genre-specific illustrative conventions should all be taken into account.
Author/Copyright holder: Unknown (pending investigation). Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.1 : Contemporary example from the grid system website
Figure 5.2 : Example of a symbolic algebra expression (the single particle solution to Schrodinger's equation)
Figure 5.3 : Table layout of funerals from the plague in London in 1665
Figure 5.4 : Tabular layout of the first page of the Gutenberg Bible: Volume 1, Old Testament, Epistle of St. Jerome. The Gutenberg Bible was printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany in the 1450s
Most screen-based information is interpreted according to textual and typographic conventions, in which graphical elements are arranged within a visual grid, occasionally divided or contained with ruled and coloured borders. Where to learn more:
thegridsystem.org
Resnick , Elizabeth (2003): Design for Communication: Conceptual Graphic Design Basics. Wiley
The computer has, however, also acquired a specialised visual vocabulary and conventions. Before the text-based computer terminal (or 'glass teletype') became ubiquitous, cathode ray tube displays were already used to display oscilloscope waves and radar echoes. Both could be easily interpreted because of their correspondence to existing paper conventions. An oscilloscope uses a horizontal time axis to trace variation of a quantity over time, as pioneered by William Playfair in his 1786 charts of the British economy. A radar screen shows direction and distance of objects from a central reference point, just as the Hereford Mappa Mundi of 1300 organised places according to their approximate direction and distance from Jerusalem. Many visual displays on computers continue to use these ancient but powerful inventions - the map and the graph. In particular, the first truly large software project, the SAGE air defense system, set out to present data in the form of an augmented radar screen - an abstract map, on which symbols and text could be overlaid. The first graphics computer, the Lincoln Laboratory Whirlwind, was created to show maps, not text.
Figure 5.5 : The technique invented by William Playfair, for visual representation of time series data.
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Premek. V. Copyright terms and licence: pd (Public Domain (information that is common property and contains no original authorship)).
Figure 5.6 : Time series data as shown on an oscilloscope screen
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Remi Kaupp. Copyright terms and licence: CC-Att-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported)
Figure 5.7 : Early radar screen from HMS Belfast built in 1936
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of NOAA's National Weather Service. Copyright terms and licence: pd (Public Domain (information that is common property and contains no original authorship)).
Figure 5.8 : Early weather radar - Hurricane Abby approaching the coast of British Honduras in 1960
Figure 5.9 : The Hereford Mappa Mundi of 1300 organised places according to their approximate direction and distance from Jerusalem
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Wikipedia. Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.10 : The SAGE system in use. The SAGE system used light guns as interaction devices.
Author/Copyright holder: The MITRE Corporation. Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.11 : The Whirlwind computer at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Basic diagrammatic conventions rely on quantitative correspondence between a direction on the surface and a continuous quantity such as time or distance. These should follow established conventions of maps and graphs.
Where to learn more:
MacEachren , Alan M. (2004): How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design. The Guilford Press
Ivan Sutherland's groundbreaking PhD research with Whirlwind's successor TX-2 introduced several more sophisticated alternatives (Sutherland 1963). The use of a light pen allowed users to draw arbitrary lines, rather than relying on control keys to select predefined options. An obvious application, in the engineering context of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where Sutherland worked, was to make engineering drawings such as the girder bridge in Figure 13. Lines on the screen are scaled versions of the actual girders, and text information can be overlaid to give details of force calculations. Plans of this kind, as a visual representation, are closely related to maps. However, where the plane of a map corresponds to a continuous surface, engineering drawings need not be continuous. Each set of connected components must share the same scale, but white space indicates an interpretive break, so that independent representations can potentially share the same divided surface - a convention introduced in Diderot's encyclopedia of 1772, which showed pictures of multiple objects on a page, but cut them loose from any shared pictorial context.
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Ivan Sutherland. Copyright terms and licence: CC-Att-SA-3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0).
Figure 5.12 : The TX-2 graphics computer, running Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad software
Figure 5.13 : An example of a force diagram created using Sutherland's Sketchpad
Figure 5.14 : A page from the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, combining pictorial elements with diagrammatic lines and categorical use of white space.
Engineering drawing conventions allow schematic views of connected components to be shown in relative scale, and with text annotations labelling the parts. White space in the representation plane can be used to help the reader distinguish elements from each other rather than directly representing physical space. Where to learn more:
Engineering draughting textbooks
Ferguson , Eugene S. (1994): Engineering and the Mind's Eye. MIT Press
The examples so far may seem rather abstract. Isn't the most 'natural' visual representation simply a picture of the thing you are trying to represent? In that case, what is so hard about design? Just point a camera, and take the picture. It seems like pictures are natural and intuitive, and anyone should be able to understand what they mean. Of course, you might want the picture to be more or less artistic, but that isn't a technical concern, is it? Well, Ivan Sutherland also suggested the potential value that computer screens might offer as artistic tools. His Sketchpad system was used to create a simple animated cartoon of a winking girl. We can use this example to ask whether pictures are necessarily 'natural', and what design factors are relevant to the selection or creation of pictures in an interaction design context.
We would not describe Sutherland's girl as 'realistic', but it is an effective representation of a girl. In fact, it is an unusually good representation of a winking girl, because all the other elements of the picture are completely abstract and generic. It uses a conventional graphic vocabulary of lines and shapes that are understood in our culture to represent eyes, mouths and so on - these elements do not draw attention to themselves, and therefore highlight the winking eye. If a realistic picture of an actual person was used instead, other aspects of the image (the particular person) might distract the viewer from this message.
Figure 5.15 : Sutherland's 'Winking Girl' drawing, created with the Sketchpad system
It is important, when considering the design options for pictures, to avoid the 'resemblance fallacy', i.e. that drawings are able to depict real object or scenes because the viewer's perception of the flat image simulates the visual perception of a real scene. In practice, all pictures rely on conventions of visual representation, and are relatively poor simulations of natural engagement with physical objects, scenes and people. We are in the habit of speaking approvingly of some pictures as more 'realistic' than others (photographs, photorealistic ray-traced renderings, 'old master' oil paintings), but this simply means that they follow more rigorously a particular set of conventions. The informed designer is aware of a wide range of pictorial conventions and options.
As an example of different pictorial conventions, consider the ways that scenes can be rendered using different forms of artistic perspective. The invention of linear perspective introduced a particular convention in which the viewer is encouraged to think of the scene as perceived through a lens or frame while holding his head still, so that nearby objects occupy a disproportionate amount of the visual field. Previously, pictorial representations more often varied the relative size of objects according to their importance - a kind of 'semantic' perspective. Modern viewers tend to think of the perspective of a camera lens as being most natural, due to the ubiquity of photography, but we still understand and respect alternative perspectives, such as the isometric perspective of the pixel art group eBoy, which has been highly influential on video game style.
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Masaccio (1401-1428). Copyright terms and licence: pd (Public Domain (information that is common property and contains no original authorship))
Figure 5.16 : Example of an early work by Masaccio, demonstrating a 'perspective' in which relative size shows symbolic importance
Author/Copyright holder: eBoy.com. Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.17 : Example of the strict isometric perspective used by the eBoy group
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Masaccio (1401-1428). Copyright terms and licence: pd (Public Domain (information that is common property and contains no original authorship)).
Figure 5.18 : Masaccio's mature work The Tribute Money, demonstrating linear perspective
As with most conventions of pictorial representation, new perspective rendering conventions are invented and esteemed for their accuracy by critical consensus, and only more slowly adopted by untrained readers. The consensus on preferred perspective shifts across cultures and historical periods. It would be naïve to assume that the conventions of today are the final and perfect product of technical evolution. As with text, we become so accustomed to interpreting these representations that we are blind to the artifice. But professional artists are fully aware of the conventions they use, even where they might have mechanical elements - the way that a photograph is framed changes its meaning, and a skilled pencil drawing is completely unlike visual edge-detection thresholds. A good pictorial representation need not simulate visual experience any more than a good painting of a unicorn need resemble an actual unicorn. When designing user interfaces, all of these techniques are available for use, and new styles of pictorial rendering are constantly being introduced.
Pictorial representations, including line drawings, paintings, perspective renderings and photographs rely on shared interpretive conventions for their meaning. It is naïve to treat screen representations as though they were simulations of experience in the physical world. Where to learn more:
Micklewright , Keith (2005): Drawing: Mastering the Language of Visual Expression. Harry N. Abrams
Stroebel , Leslie, Todd , Hollis and Zakia , Richard (1979): Visual Concepts for Photographers. Focal Press
The first impulse of a computer scientist, when given a pencil, seems to be to draw boxes and connect them with lines. These node and link diagrams can be analysed in terms of the graph structures that are fundamental to the study of algorithms (but unrelated to the visual representations known as graphs or charts). A predecessor of these connectivity diagrams can be found in electrical circuit schematics, where the exact location of components, and the lengths of the wires, can be arranged anywhere, because they are irrelevant to the circuit function. Another early program created for the TX-2, this time by Ivan Sutherland's brother Bert, allowed users to create circuit diagrams of this kind. The distinctive feature of a node-and-link connectivity diagram is that, since the position of each node is irrelevant to the operation of the circuit, it can be used to carry other information. Marian Petre's research into the work of electronics engineers (Petre 1995) catalogued the ways in which they positioned components in ways that were meaningful to human readers, but not to the computer - like the blank space between Diderot's objects this is a form of 'secondary notation' - use of the plane to assist the reader in ways not related to the technical content.
Circuit connectivity diagrams have been most widely popularised through the London Underground diagram, an invention of electrical engineer Henry Beck. The diagram clarified earlier maps by exploiting the fact that most underground travellers are only interested in order and connectivity, not location, of the stations on the line. (Sadly, the widespread belief that a 'diagram' will be technical and hard to understand means that most people describe this as the London Undergound 'map', despite Beck's insistence on his original term).
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Harry C. Beck and possibly F. H. Stingemore, born 1890, died 1954. Stingmore designed posters for the Underground Group and London Transport 1914-1942. Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.19 : Henry Beck's London Underground Diagram (1933)
Author/Copyright holder: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA, USA. Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.20 : Node and link diagram of the kind often drawn by computing professionals
Figure 5.21 : Map of the London Underground network, as it was printed before the design of Beck's diagram (1932)
Node and link diagrams are still widely perceived as being too technical for broad acceptance. Nevertheless, they can present information about ordering and relationships clearly, especially if consideration is given to the value of allowing human users to specify positions. Where to learn more:
Diagrammatic representation books
Lowe , Ric (1992): Successful Instructional Diagram.
Maps frequently use symbols to indicate specific kinds of landmark. Sometimes these are recognisably pictorial (the standard symbols for tree and church), but others are fairly arbitrary conventions (the symbol for a railway station). As the resolution of computer displays increased in the 1970s, a greater variety of symbols could be differentiated, by making them more detailed, as in the MIT SDMS (Spatial Data Management System) that mapped a naval battle scenario with symbols for different kinds of ship. However, the dividing line between pictures and symbols is ambiguous. Children's drawings of houses often use conventional symbols (door, four windows, triangle roof and chimney) whether or not their own house has two storeys, or a fireplace. Letters of the Latin alphabet are shapes with completely arbitrary relationship to their phonetic meaning, but the Korean phonetic alphabet is easier to learn because the forms mimic the shape of the mouth when pronouncing those sounds. The field of semiotics offers sophisticated ways of analysing the basis on which marks correspond to meanings. In most cases, the best approach for an interaction designer is simply to adopt familiar conventions. When these do not exist, the design task is more challenging.
It is unclear which of the designers working on the Xerox Star coined the term 'icon' for the small pictures symbolising different kinds of system object. David Canfield Smith winningly described them as being like religious icons, which he said were pictures standing for (abstract) spiritual concepts. But 'icon' is also used as a technical term in semiotics. Unfortunately, few of the Xerox team had a sophisticated understanding of semiotics. It was fine art PhD Susan Kare's design work on the Apple Macintosh that established a visual vocabulary which has informed the genre ever since. Some general advice principles are offered by authors such as Horton (1994), but the successful design of icons is still sporadic. Many software publishers simply opt for a memorable brand logo, while others seriously misjudge the kinds of correspondence that are appropriate (my favourite blooper was a software engineering tool in which a pile of coins was used to access the 'change' command).
It has been suggested that icons, being pictorial, are easier to understand than text, and that pre-literate children, or speakers of different languages, might thereby be able to use computers without being able to read. In practice, most icons simply add decoration to text labels, and those that are intended to be self-explanatory must be supported with textual tooltips. The early Macintosh icons, despite their elegance, were surprisingly open to misinterpretation. One PhD graduate of my acquaintance believed that the Macintosh folder symbol was a briefcase (the folder tag looked like a handle), which allowed her to carry her files from place to place when placed inside it. Although mistaken, this belief never caused her any trouble - any correspondence can work, so long as it is applied consistently.
Copyright terms and licence: pd (Public Domain (information that is common property and contains no original authorship)).
Figure 5.22 : In art, the term Icon (from Greek, eikon, "image") commonly refers to religious paintings in Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern-rite Catholic jurisdictions. Here a 6th-century encaustic icon from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
Author/Copyright holder: Apple Computer, Inc. Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.23 : In computing, David Canfield Smith described computer icons as being like religious icons, which he said were pictures standing for (abstract) spiritual concepts.
The design of simple and memorable visual symbols is a sophisticated graphic design skill. Following established conventions is the easiest option, but new symbols must be designed with an awareness of what sort of correspondence is intended - pictorial, symbolic, metonymic (e.g. a key to represent locking), bizarrely mnemonic, but probably not monolingual puns. Where to learn more:
Napoles , Veronica (1987): Corporate Identity Design.
The ambitious graphic designs of the Xerox Star/Alto and Apple Lisa/Macintosh were the first mass-market visual interfaces. They were marketed to office professionals, making the 'cover story' that they resembled an office desktop a convenient explanatory device. Of course, as was frequently noted at the time, these interfaces behaved nothing like a real desktop. The mnemonic symbol for file deletion (a wastebasket) was ridiculous if interpreted as an object placed on a desk. And nobody could explain why the desk had windows in it (the name was derived from the 'clipping window' of the graphics architecture used to implement them - it was at some later point that they began to be explained as resembling sheets of paper on a desk). There were immediate complaints from luminaries such as Alan Kay and Ted Nelson that strict analogical correspondence to physical objects would become obstructive rather than instructive. Nevertheless, for many years the marketing story behind the desktop metaphor was taken seriously, despite the fact that all attempts to improve the Macintosh design with more elaborate visual analogies , as in General Magic and Microsoft Bob, subsequently failed.
The 'desktop' can be far more profitably analysed (and extended) by understanding the representational conventions that it uses. The size and position of icons and windows on the desktop has no meaning, they are not connected, and there is no visual perspective, so it is neither a map, graph nor picture. The real value is the extent to which it allows secondary notation, with the user creating her own meaning by arranging items as she wishes. Window borders separate areas of the screen into different pictorial, text or symbolic contexts as in the typographic page design of a textbook or magazine. Icons use a large variety of conventions to indicate symbolic correspondence to software operations and/or company brands, but they are only occasionally or incidentally organised into more complex semiotic structures.
Author/Copyright holder:Apple Computer, Inc and Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA. Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
Figure 5.24 : Apple marketed the visual metaphor in 1983 as a key benefit of the Lisa computer. This advertisement said 'You can work with Lisa the same familiar way you work at your desk'. However a controlled study by Carroll and Mazur (1986) found that the claim for immediately familiar operation may have been exaggerated.
Figure 5.25 : The Xerox Alto and Apple Lisa, early products in which bitmapped displays allowed pictorial icons to be used as mnemonic cues within the 'desktop metaphor'
Author/Copyright holder: Courtesy of Mschlindwein. Copyright terms and licence: CC-Att-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported).
Figure 5.26 : Apple Lisa
Theories of visual representation, rather than theories of visual metaphor, are the best approach to explaining the conventional Macintosh/Windows 'desktop'. There is huge room for improvement. Where to learn more:
Blackwell , Alan (2006): The reification of metaphor as a design tool . In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction , 13 (4) pp. 490-530
The analysis in this article has addressed the most important principles of visual representation for screen design, introduced with examples from the early history of graphical user interfaces. In most cases, these principles have been developed and elaborated within whole fields of study and professional skill - typography, cartography, engineering and architectural draughting, art criticism and semiotics. Improving on the current conventions requires serious skill and understanding. Nevertheless, interaction designers should be able, when necessary, to invent new visual representations.
One approach is to take a holistic perspective on visual language, information design, notations, or diagrams. Specialist research communities in these fields address many relevant factors from low-level visual perception to critique of visual culture. Across all of them, it can be necessary to ignore (or not be distracted by) technical and marketing claims, and to remember that all visual representations simply comprise marks on a surface that are intended to correspond to things understood by the reader. The two dimensions of the surface can be made to correspond to physical space (in a map), to dimensions of an object, to a pictorial perspective, or to continuous abstract scales (time or quantity). The surface can also be partitioned into regions that should be interpreted differently. Within any region, elements can be aligned, grouped, connected or contained in order to express their relationships. In each case, the correspondence between that arrangement, and the intended interpretation, must be understood by convention, explained, or derived from the structural and perceptual properties of marks on the plane. Finally, any individual element might be assigned meaning according to many different semiotic principles of correspondence.
The following table summarises holistic views, as introduced above, drawing principally on the work of Bertin, Richards, MacEachren, Blackwell & Engelhardt and Engelhardt. Where to learn more:
Engelhardt , Yuri (2002). The Language of Graphics. A framework for the analysis of syntax and meaning in maps, charts and diagrams (PhD Thesis) . University of Amsterdam
|
|
| |
Marks | Shape | Literal (visual imitation of physical features) | Mark position, identify category (shape, texture colour) |
Symbols | Geometric elements | Topological (linking) | Texts and symbolic calculi |
Regions | Alignment grids | Containment | Identifying shared membership |
Surfaces | The plane | Literal (map) | Typographic layouts |
Table 5.1 : Summary of the ways in which graphical representations can be applied in design, via different systems of correspondence
Table 5.2 : Screenshot from the site gapminder.org, illustrating a variety of correspondence conventions used in different parts of the page
As an example of how one might analyse (or working backwards, design) a complex visual representation, consider the case of musical scores. These consist of marks on a paper surface, bound into a multi-page book, that is placed on a stand at arms length in front of a performer. Each page is vertically divided into a number of regions, visually separated by white space and grid alignment cues. The regions are ordered, with that at the top of the page coming first. Each region contains two quantitative axes, with the horizontal axis representing time duration, and the vertical axis pitch. The vertical axis is segmented by lines to categorise pitch class . Symbols placed at a given x-y location indicate a specific pitched sound to be initiated at a specific time. A conventional symbol set indicates the duration of the sound. None of the elements use any variation in colour, saturation or texture. A wide variety of text labels and annotation symbols are used to elaborate these basic elements. Music can be, and is, also expressed using many other visual representations (see e.g. Duignan for a survey of representations used in digital music processing).
The historical examples of early computer representations used in this article are mainly drawn from Sutherland (Ed. Blackwell and Rodden 2003), Garland (1994), and Blackwell (2006). Historical reviews of visual representation in other fields include Ferguson (1992), Pérez-Gómez and Pelletier (1997), McCloud (1993), Tufte (1983). Reviews of human perceptual principles can be found in Gregory (1970), Ittelson (1996), Ware (2004), Blackwell (2002). Advice on principles of interaction with visual representation is distributed throughout the HCI literature, but classics include Norman (1988), Horton (1994), Shneiderman ( Shneiderman and Plaisant 2009, Card et al 1999, Bederson and Shneiderman 2003) and Spence (2001). Green's Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework has for many years provided a systematic classification of the design parameters in interactive visual representations. A brief introduction is provided in Blackwell and Green (2003).
Research on visual representation topics is regularly presented at the Diagrams conference series (which has a particular emphasis on cognitive science ), the InfoDesign and Vision Plus conferences (which emphasise graphic and typographic information design), the Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing symposia (emphasising software tools and development), and the InfoVis and Information Visualisation conferences (emphasising quantitative and scientific data visualisation ).
2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998
2008 2006 2004 2002 2000
2008 2007 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990
2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1995
Anderson , Michael, Meyer , Bernd and Olivier , Patrick (2002): Diagrammatic Representation and Reasoning. London, UK,
Bederson , Benjamin B. and Shneiderman , Ben (2003): The Craft of Information Visualization : Readings and Reflections. Morgan Kaufman Publishers
Bertin , Jacques (1967): Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps (Sémiologie graphique: Les diagrammes - Les réseaux - Les cartes). English translation by W. J. Berg. Madison, WI, USA, University of Wisconsin Press
Blackwell , Alan (2002): Psychological perspectives on diagrams and their users. In: Anderson , Michael, Meyer , Bernd and Olivier , Patrick (eds.). "Diagrammatic Representation and Reasoning". London, UK: pp. 109-123
Blackwell , Alan and Engelhardt , Yuri (2002): A Meta-Taxonomy for Diagram Research. In: Anderson , Michael, Meyer , Bernd and Olivier , Patrick (eds.). "Diagrammatic Representation and Reasoning". London, UK: pp. 47-64
Blackwell , Alan and Green , T. R. G. (2003): Notational Systems - The Cognitive Dimensions of Notations Framework. In: Carroll , John M. (ed.). "HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks". San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman Publisherspp. 103-133
Carroll , John M. and Mazur , Sandra A. (1986): LisaLearning . In Computer , 19 (11) pp. 35-49
Garland , Ken (1994): Mr . Beck's Underground Map. Capital Transport Publishing
Goodman , Nelson (1976): Languages of Art. Hackett Publishing Company
Gregory , Richard L. (1970): The Intelligent Eye. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Horton , William (1994): The Icon Book: Visual Symbols for Computer Systems and Documentation. John Wiley and Sons
Ittelson , W. H. (1996): Visual perception of markings . In Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , 3 (2) pp. 171-187
Mccloud , Scott (1994): Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Paperbacks
Norman , Donald A. (1988): The Design of Everyday Things. New York, Doubleday
Petre , Marian (1995): Why Looking Isn't Always Seeing: Readership Skills and Graphical Programming . In Communications of the ACM , 38 (6) pp. 33-44
Pérez-Gómez , Alberto and Pelletier , Louise (1997): Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. MIT Press
Richards , Clive (1984). Diagrammatics: an investigation aimed at providing a theoretical framework for studying diagrams and for establishing a taxonomy of their fundamental modes of graphic organization. Unpublished Phd Thesis . Royal College of Art, London, UK
Sellen , Abigail and Harper , Richard H. R. (2001): The Myth of the Paperless Office. MIT Press
Shneiderman , Ben and Plaisant , Catherine (2009): Designing the User Interface : Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed.). Addison-Wesley
Spence , Robert (2001): Information Visualization. Addison Wesley
Sutherland , Ivan E. (1963). Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System. PhD Thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, online version and editors' introduction by Alan Blackwell & K. Rodden. Technical Report 574 . Cambridge University Computer Laboratory
Tufte , Edward R. (1983): The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT , Graphics Press
Ware , Colin (2004): Information Visualization: Perception for Design, 2nd Ed. San Francisco, Morgan Kaufman
5.10 commentary by ben shneiderman.
Since computer displays are such powerful visual appliances, careful designers devote extensive effort to getting the visual representation right. They have to balance the demands of many tasks, diverse users, and challenging requirements, such as short learning time, rapid performance, low error rates, and good retention over time. Designing esthetic interfaces that please and even delight users is a further expectation that designers must meet to be successful. For playful and discretionary tasks esthetic concerns may dominate, but for life critical tasks, rapid performance with low error rates are essential. Alan Blackwell's competent description of many visual representation issues is a great start for newcomers with helpful reminders even for experienced designers. The videos make for a pleasant personal accompaniment that bridges visual representation for interface design with thoughtful analyses of representational art. Blackwell's approach might be enriched by more discussion of visual representations in functional product design tied to meaningful tasks. Learning from paintings of Paris is fine, but aren't there other lessons to learn from visual representations in airport kiosks, automobile dashboards, or intensive care units? These devices as well as most graphical user interfaces and mobile devices raise additional questions of changing state visualization and interaction dynamics. Modern designers need to do more than show the right phone icon, they need to show ringing, busy, inactive, no network, conference mode, etc., which may include color changes (highlighted, grayed out), animations, and accompanying sounds. These designers also need to deal with interactive visual representations that happen with a click, double-click, right-click, drag, drag-and-drop, hover, multi-select, region-select, brushing-linking, and more. The world of mobile devices such as phones, cameras, music players, or medical sensors is the new frontier for design, where visual representations are dynamic and tightly integrated with sound, haptics, and novel actions such as shaking, twisting, or body movements. Even more challenging is the expectation that goes beyond the solitary viewer to the collaboration in which multiple users embedded in a changing physical environment produce new visual representations. These changing and interactive demands on designers invite creative expressions that are very different from designs for static signs, printed diagrams, or interpretive art. The adventure for visual representation designers is to create a new language of interaction that engages users, accelerates learning, provides comprehensible feedback, and offers appropriate warnings when dangers emerge. Blackwell touches on some of these issues in the closing Gapminder example, but I was thirsty for more.
If I may be permitted a graphically inspired metaphor Alan Blackwell provides us with a neat pen sketch of that extensive scene called 'visual representation' (Blackwell 2011).
"Visualisation has a lot more to offer than most people are aware of today" we are told by Robert Kosara at the end of his commentary (Kosara 2010) on Stephen Few's related article on ' Data visualisation for human perception ' (Few 2010). Korsara is right, and Blackwell maps out the broad territory in which many of these visualisation offerings may be located. In this commentary I offer a few observations on some prominent features in that landscape: dynamics, picturing, semiotics and metaphor.
Ben Shneiderman's critique of Blackwell's piece points to a lack of attention to "... additional questions of changing state visualisations and interaction dynamics" (Shneiderman 2010). Indeed the possibilities offered by these additional questions present some exciting challenges for interaction designers - opportunities to create novel and effective combinations of visual with other sensory and motor experiences in dynamic operational contexts. Shneiderman suggests that: "These changing and interactive demands on designers invite creative expressions that are very different from design for static signs, printed diagrams, or interpretive art". This may be so up to a point, but here Shneinderman and I part company a little. The focus of Blackwell's essay is properly on the visual representation side of facilities available to interaction designers, and in that context he is quite right to give prominence to highly successful but static visual representation precedents, and also to point out the various specialist fields of endeavour in which they have been developed. Some of these representational approaches have histories reaching back thousands of years and are deeply embedded within our culture. It would be foolhardy to disregard conventions established in, say, the print domain, and to try to re-invent everything afresh for the screen, even if this were a practical proposition. Others have made arguments to support looking to historical precedents. For example Michael Twyman has pointed out that when considering typographic cueing and "... the problems of the electronic age ... we have much to learn from the manuscript age" (Twyman 1987, p5). He proposes that studying the early scribes' use of colour, spacing and other graphical devices can usefully inform the design of today's screen-based texts. And as Blackwell points out in his opening section on 'Typography and text' "most information on computer screen is still presented as text".
It is also sometimes assumed that the pictorial representation of a dynamic process is best presented dynamically. However it can be argued that the comic book convention of using a sequence of static frames is sometimes superior for focusing the viewer's attention on the critical events in a process, rather than using an animated sequence in which key moments may be missed. This is of course not to deny the immense value of the moving and interactive visual image in the right context. The Gapminder charts are a case in point (http://www.gapminder.org). Blackwell usefully includes one of these, but as a static presentation. These diagrams come to life and really tell their story through the clustering of balloons that inflate or deflate as they move about the screen when driven through simulated periods of time.
While designing a tool for engineers to learn about the operation and maintenance of an oil system for an aircraft jet engine, Detlev Fischer devised a series of interactive animations, called 'Cinegrams' to display in diagrammatic form various operating procedures (Fischer and Richards 1995). He used the cinematic techniques of time compression and expansion in one animated sequence to show how the slow accumulation of debris in an oil filter, over an extended period of time, would eventually create a blockage to the oil flow and trigger the opening of a by-pass device in split seconds. Notwithstanding my earlier comment about the potential superiority of the comic strip genre for displaying some time dependant processes this particular Cinegram proved very instructive for the targeted users. There are many other examples one could cite where dynamic picturing of this sort has been deployed to similarly good effect in interactive environments.
Shneinderman also comments that: "Blackwell's approach might be enriched by more discussion of visual representation in functional product design tied to meaningful tasks". An area I have worked in is the pictorial representation of engineering assemblies to show that which is normally hidden from view. Techniques to do this on the printed page include 'ghosting' (making occluding parts appear as if transparent), 'exploding' (showing components separately, set out in dis-assembly order along an axis) and cutting away (taking a slice out of an outer shell to reveal mechanisms beneath). All these three-dimensional picturing techniques were used by, if not actually invented by, Leonardo Da Vinci (Richards 2006). All could be enhanced by interactive viewer control - an area of further fruitful exploration for picturing purposes in technical documentation contexts.
Blackwell's section on 'Pictures' warns us that when considering picturing options to avoid the "resemblance fallacy" pointing out the role that convention plays, even in so called photo-realistic images. He also points out that viewers can be distracted from the message by incidental information in 'realistic' pictures. From my own work in the field I know that technical illustrators' synoptic black and white outline depictions are regarded as best for drawing the viewer's attention to the key features of a pictorial representation. Research in this area has shown that when using linear perspective type drawings the appropriate deployment of lines of varying 'weight', rather than of a single thickness, can have a significant effect on viewers' levels of understanding about what is depicted (Richards, Bussard and Newman 2007). This work was done specifically to determine an 'easy to read' visual representational style when manipulating on the screen images of CAD objects. The most effective convention was shown to be: thin lines for edges where both planes forming the edge are visible and thicker lines for edges where only one plane is visible - that is where an outline edge forms a kind of horizon to the object.
These line thickness conventions appear on the face of it to have little to do with how we normally perceive the world, and Blackwell tells us that: "A good pictorial representation need not simulate visual experience any more than a good painting of a unicorn need resemble an actual unicorn". And some particular representations of unicorns can aid our understanding of how to use semiotic theory to figure out how pictures may be interpreted and, importantly, sometimes misunderstood - as I shall describe in the following.
Blackwell mentions semiotics, almost in passing, however it can help unravel some of the complexities of visual representation. Evelyn Goldsmith uses a Charles Addams cartoon to explain the relevance of the 'syntactic', 'semantic' and 'pragmatic' levels of semiotic analysis when applied to pictures (Goldsmith 1978). The cartoon in question, like many of those by Charles Addams, has no caption. It shows two unicorns standing on a small island in the pouring rain forlornly watching the Ark sailing away into the distance. Goldsmith suggests that most viewers will have little trouble in interpreting the overlapping elements in the scene, for example that one unicorn is standing behind the other, nor any difficulty understanding that the texture gradient of the sea stands for a receding horizontal plane. These represent the syntactic level of interpretation. Most adults will correctly identify the various components of the picture at the semantic level, however Goldsmith proposes that a young child might mistake the unicorns for horses and be happy with 'boat' for the Ark. But at the pragmatic level of interpretation, unless a viewer of the picture is aware of the story of Noah's Ark, the joke will be lost - the connection will not be made between the scene depicted in the drawing and the scarcity of unicorns. This reinforces the point that one should not assume that the understanding of pictures is straightforward. There is much more to it than a simple matter or recognition. This is especially the case when metaphor is involved in visual representation.
Blackwell's section on 'Visual metaphor' is essentially a critique of the use of "theories of visual metaphor" as an "approach to explaining the conventional Mackintosh/Windows 'desktop' ". His is a convincing argument but there is much more which may be said about the use of visual metaphor - especially to show that which otherwise cannot be pictured. In fact most diagrams employ a kind of spatial metaphor when not depicting physical arrangements, for example when using the branches of a tree to represent relations within a family (Richards 2002). The capability to represent the invisible is the great strength of the visual metaphor, but there are dangers, and here I refer back to semiotics and particularly the pragmatic level of analysis. One needs to know the story to get the picture.
In our parental home, one of the many books much loved by my two brothers and me, was The Practical Encyclopaedia for Children (Odhams circa 1948). In it a double page spread illustration shows the possible evolutionary phases of the elephant. These are depicted as a procession of animals in a primordial swamp cum jungle setting. Starting with a tiny fish and passing to a small aquatic creature climbing out of the water onto the bank the procession progresses on through eight phases of transformation, including the Moeritherium and the Paleomatodon, finishing up with the land-based giant of today's African Elephant. Recently one of my brothers confessed to me that through studying this graphical diorama he had believed as a child that the elephant had a life cycle akin to that of a frog. He had understood that the procession was a metaphor for time. He had just got the duration wrong - by several orders of magnitude. He also hadn't understood that each separate depiction was of a different animal. He had used the arguably more sophisticated concept that it was the same animal at different times and stages in its individual development.
Please forgive the cliché if I say that this anecdote clearly illustrates that there can be more to looking at a picture than meets the eye? Blackwell's essay provides some useful pointers for exploring the possibilities of this fascinating territory of picturing and visual representation in general.
Alan Blackwell has provided us with a fine introduction to the design of visual representations. The article does a great job in motivating the novice designer of visual representations to explore some of the fundamental issues that lurk just beneath the surface of creating effective representations. Furthermore, he gives us all quite a challenge:
Alan, quite rightly, claims that we must consider the fundamental principles of symbolic correspondence, if we are to design new genres of visual representations beyond the common forms of displays and interfaces. The report begins to equip the novice visual representation designer with an understanding of the nature of symbolic correspondence between the components of visual representations and the things they represent, whether objects, actions or ideas. In particular, it gives a useful survey of how correspondence works in a range of representations and provides a systematic framework of how systems of correspondence can be applied to design. The interactive screen shot is an exemplary visual representation that vividly reveals the correspondence techniques used in each part of the example diagram.
However, suppose you really wished to rise to the challenge of creating novel visual representations, how far will a knowledge of the fundamentals of symbolic correspondence take you? Drawing on my studies of the role of diagrams in the history of science, experience of inventing novel visual representations and research on problem solving and learning with diagrams, from the perspective of Cognitive Science, my view is that such knowledge will be necessary but not sufficient for your endeavours. So, what else should the budding visual representation designer consider? From the perspective of cognitive science there are at least three aspects that we may profitably target.
First, there is the knowledge of how human process information; specifically the nature of the human cognitive architecture. By this, I mean more than visual perception, but an understanding of how we mentally receive, store, retrieve, transform and transmit information. The way the mind deals with each of these basic types of information processing provides relevant constrains for the design of visual representations. For instance, humans often, perhaps even typically, encode concepts in the form of hierarchies of schemas, which are information structures that coordinate attributes that describe and differentiate classes of concepts. These hierarchies of schemas underpin our ability to efficiently generalize or specialize concepts. Hence, we can use this knowledge to consider whether particular forms of symbolic correspondence will assist or hinder the forms of inference that we hope the user of the representation may make. For example, are the main symbolic correspondences in a visual representation consistent with the key attributes of the schemas for the concepts being considered?
Second, it may be useful for the designer to consider the broader nature of the tasks that the user may wish to do with the designed representation. Resource allocation, optimization, calculating quantities, inferences about of possible outcomes, classification, reasoning about extreme or special cases, and debugging: these are just a few of the many possibilities. These tasks are more generic than the information-oriented options considered in the 'design uses' column of Figure 27 in the article. They are worth addressing, because they provide constraints for the initial stages of representation design, by narrowing the search for what are likely to be effective correspondences to adopt. For example, if taxonomic classification is important, then separation and layering will be important correspondences; whereas magnitude calculations may demand scale mapping, Euclidian and metrical correspondences.
The third aspect concerns situations in which the visual representation must support not just a single task, but many diverse tasks. For example, a visual representation to help students learn about electricity will be used to explain the topology of circuits, make computations with electrical quantities, provide explanations of circuit behaviour (in terms of formal algebraic models and as qualitative causal models), facilitate fault finding or trouble shooting, among other activities. The creation of novel representations in such circumstances is perhaps one of the most challenging for designers. So, what knowledge can help? In this case, I advocate attempting to design representations on the basis of an analysis of the underlying conceptual structure of the knowledge of the target domain. Why? Because the nature of the knowledge is invariant across different classes of task. For example, for problem solving and learning of electricity, all the tasks depend upon the common fundamental conceptual structures of the domain that knit together the laws governing the physical properties of electricity and circuit topology. Hence, a representation that makes these concepts readily available through effective representation designed will probably be effective for a wide range of tasks.
In summary, it is desirable for the aspiring visual representation designer to consider symbolic correspondence, but I recommend they cast their net more widely for inspiration by learning about the human cognitive architecture, focusing on the nature of the task for which they are designing, and most critically thinking about the underlying conceptual structure of the knowledge of the target domain.
I have been teaching human-computer interaction to students with a wide range of backgrounds for many years. One of the most difficult areas for them to learn seems to be visual design. Students seem to quickly pick up rules like Nielsen's Heuristics for interaction (Nielsen & Molich, 1990), whereas the guidelines for visual design are much more subtle. Alan Blackwell's article presents many useful points, but a designer needs to know so much more! Whereas students can achieve competence at achieving Nielsen's "consistency and standards," for example, they struggle with selecting an appropriate representation for their information. And only a trained graphic designer is likely to be able to create an attractive and effective icon. Some people have a much better aesthetic sense, and can create much more beautiful and appropriate representations. A key goal of my introductory course, therefore, is to try to impart to the students how difficult it is to do visual design, and how wide the set of choices is. Studying the examples that Blackwell provides will give the reader a small start towards effective visual representations, but the path requires talent, study, and then iterative design and testing to evaluate and improve a design's success.
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When you look at an artwork, the first thing that crosses your mind is how attractive or unattractive the art is. While some artwork simply expresses aesthetic beauty, other artworks aim to pass a message or represent real situations. The latter type of art is known as representational art.
Keep reading to learn more about representational art including its history, its importance in the art world, and some of the styles most well-known artists.
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Some representational artworks fuse abstract art with reality, but this doesn’t make it less of representational art. In other words, some representational artworks could depict real objects in a realistic way, but that is not required.
But, provided that it still has the basic elements related to something real, it is still considered a form of representational art.
Note #1 : Sometimes, Representational Art is referred to as Figurative Art even though it doesn’t have to contain figures.
There are also ancient arts that date back as far as the Stone age. They usually represent real people and scenes and sometimes narrate the setting of their environment.
Over time, painting techniques have continued to develop and have undergone many stylistic changes. Despite the phases it’s gone through, figurative art has maintained the concept of presenting real-life objects as the subject of the painting.
Representational art serves as a guideline for artistic merit.
One of the major roles that representational paintings and other artworks play is that it sets a standard for evaluating the artistic excellence of an art piece . Evaluation of an artist’s work often depends on the authenticity and similarity it shares with the image the artist tried to recreate. With this, it is easier to differentiate outstanding works from average ones, especially in a portrait or still-life drawing.
As a result, beginners favor representational art as it helps hone basic artistic skills and helps them graduate into more complicated art forms.
Artists who have created well-known representational works of art.
There have been many works of art that artists have created over the years that depict real-life things and people. Some of them are exceptional examples of representational art. Each artwork depicts a specific subject matter such as a person, a still-life, an animal, or a landscape.
Cézanne used this technique to bring out the colors of the subjects he was painting, allowing him to produce works of art that were lifelike in their appearance.
Valencian Fishermen is a simple picture that Sorolla painted in 1895 during the period of the Impressionist movement. By giving his painting such a straightforward title, Joaquin Sorolla could convey exactly what his artwork was about.
Turkeys demonstrated the painters’ ability to accurately portray animal representations in an incredibly realistic and representational manner. In this picture, Sir Stanley Spencer painted turkeys in the backyard of someone’s home. These turkeys were the focal point of the painting. Thus, they were the first things an admirer saw.
Because of the incredible attention to detail and realism he used in his artwork, galleries regard this painting as a notable example of Representational art .
Representational art continues to make history, and the style often gives artists a starting point for an artwork.
Similar posts, what kind of art is popular today (styles & mediums), can an artist have multiple styles (explained), what is folk art (explained), applied art vs fine art: what’s the difference, street art vs graffiti (how are they different), the beginner’s guide to conceptual art: what’s the big deal.
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Title: where is your place, visual place recognition.
Abstract: Visual Place Recognition (VPR) is often characterized as being able to recognize the same place despite significant changes in appearance and viewpoint. VPR is a key component of Spatial Artificial Intelligence, enabling robotic platforms and intelligent augmentation platforms such as augmented reality devices to perceive and understand the physical world. In this paper, we observe that there are three "drivers" that impose requirements on spatially intelligent agents and thus VPR systems: 1) the particular agent including its sensors and computational resources, 2) the operating environment of this agent, and 3) the specific task that the artificial agent carries out. In this paper, we characterize and survey key works in the VPR area considering those drivers, including their place representation and place matching choices. We also provide a new definition of VPR based on the visual overlap -- akin to spatial view cells in the brain -- that enables us to find similarities and differences to other research areas in the robotics and computer vision fields. We identify numerous open challenges and suggest areas that require more in-depth attention in future works.
Comments: | Accepted to the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI2021) |
Subjects: | Robotics (cs.RO); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Information Retrieval (cs.IR); Machine Learning (cs.LG) |
Cite as: | [cs.RO] |
(or [cs.RO] for this version) | |
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How visualization can benefit your well-being, visualization can help you reach a range of goals..
Updated November 20, 2023 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Co-written by Kelsey Schultz and Tchiki Davis
Visualization, also called mental imagery , is essentially seeing with the mind’s eye or hearing with the mind’s ear. That is, when visualizing you are having a visual sensory experience without the use of your eyes. In fact, research has shown that visualization recruits the same brain areas that actual seeing does (Pearson et al., 2015).
Humans have evolved to rely heavily on our eyesight, making us highly visually-oriented creatures. Because our brains are adapted to easily process and comprehend visual information, visualization can be a powerful tool for influencing our thoughts, emotions , and behaviors. In fact, research has shown that processing emotions using visualization is more powerful than processing verbally (Blackwell et al., 2019). For example, when research participants listen to descriptions of emotionally valenced situations (i.e., “your boss telling you that they are disappointed with your work”), participants who are instructed to imagine themselves in the situation demonstrate a greater change in mood than those that are instructed only to think about the situation verbally (Blackwell et al., 2019).
There appear to be a number of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral benefits to practicing visualization.
Emotional. Some forms of visualization have been shown to increase optimism and other positive emotions (Murphy et al., 2015). It has also been shown to be a useful method for regulating negative emotions such as anxiety or overwhelm (Blackwell et al., 2019).
Cognitive. Visualization techniques can be used to facilitate some kinds of decision-making and problem-solving (Blackwell et al., 2019). For example, visualization might be helpful when planning the best route to take on your upcoming road trip. Visualization techniques, such as the mind palace, are also an effective means of improving memory . The mind palace technique involves using a place you are very familiar with, such as your bedroom, and using different locations within that space as mnemonic devices associated with a particular piece of information you are trying to store.
Behavioral. Visualization can also help us achieve our goals by allowing us to determine the appropriate sequences of actions needed to reach our goal and identify any potential obstacles we might encounter as we proceed toward a goal. In other words, we can use visualization as a sort of rough draft for our plans by imagining each step we need to take to reach our goal, what each step might include, what might go wrong, and the ways in which we might need to prepare.
Music. Visualization music is music that is specifically intended to facilitate visualization and similar meditative processes. This kind of music can also be described as atmospheric or ambient, as the purpose is not to occupy your attention , but rather to help you focus attention on your visualizations.
Boards. Visualization boards, also called vision boards , are visual representations of your goals , intentions, and desires. Vision boards are typically poster-sized and include a collage-type arrangement of images that symbolize different facets of your goals and intentions. Vision boards are useful for ensuring that your goals remain salient. That is, by creating a visual representation of your goals, you can easily look back at your vision board and remind yourself of the intentions you set. When your intentions are at the forefront of your mind, you are more likely to act in accordance with them.
Guided imagery is a visualization exercise in which you engage all of your senses as you imagine yourself in a positive, peaceful environment.
Visualization is a simple yet powerful technique that we can use to improve many facets of our lives. We can use visualization to improve our mood, help us remember important information, facilitate problem-solving and decision-making , and boost progress toward our goals. Depending on the purpose, there are many forms of visualization we can practice. For example, if we are trying to regulate our mood we might try visualization meditation , whereas if we are trying to solidify our goals for the new year we might use a vision board or a mind map .
Adapted from a post on visualization published by The Berkeley Well-Being Institute.
Blackwell, S. E. (2019). Mental imagery: From basic research to clinical practice. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 29(3), 235.
Murphy, S. E., O’Donoghue, M. C., Drazich, E. H., Blackwell, S. E., Nobre, A. C., & Holmes, E. A. (2015). Imagining a brighter future: the effect of positive imagery training on mood, prospective mental imagery and emotional bias in older adults. Psychiatry Research, 230(1), 36-43.
Pearson, J., Naselaris, T., Holmes, E. A., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2015). Mental imagery: functional mechanisms and clinical applications. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(10), 590-602.
Tchiki Davis, Ph.D. , is a consultant, writer, and expert on well-being technology.
Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.
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Visual Representation refers to the principles by which markings on a surface are made and interpreted. Designers use representations like typography and illustrations to communicate information, emotions and concepts. Color, imagery, typography and layout are crucial in this communication. Alan Blackwell, cognition scientist and professor ...
Defining Visual Representation: Visual representation is the act of conveying information, ideas, or concepts through visual elements such as images, charts, graphs, maps, and other graphical forms. It's a means of translating the abstract into the tangible, providing a visual language that transcends the limitations of words alone. ...
Visual representation ultimately serves to bring an idea out into the open and to allow others to experience it. For centuries, architects have used and invented a variety of techniques to ...
The use of visual representations (i.e., photographs, diagrams, models) has been part of science, and their use makes it possible for scientists to interact with and represent complex phenomena, not observable in other ways. Despite a wealth of research in science education on visual representations, the emphasis of such research has mainly been on the conceptual understanding when using ...
Page 5: Visual Representations. Yet another evidence-based strategy to help students learn abstract mathematics concepts and solve problems is the use of visual representations. More than simply a picture or detailed illustration, a visual representation—often referred to as a schematic representation or schematic diagram— is an accurate ...
Representation in art refers to the portrayal or depiction of subjects, objects, or ideas in a visual form. It is the artist's interpretation of reality, whether it be realistic, abstract, or somewhere in between.
Visual representation is a complex concept that connects with fundamental questions of "reality," ideology and power, agency, as well as signification and the procedures and potentials for interpreting meaning. There is, however, a general agreement that the meaning of an image is "made" at three sites: (1) the site of the image, (2 ...
Definition. The concept of "representation" captures the signs that stand in for and take the place of something else [ 5 ]. Visual representation, in particular, refers to the special case when these signs are visual (as opposed to textual, mathematical, etc.). On the other hand, there is no limit on what may be (visually) represented ...
Visual representation is one of the most efficient decision making techniques. Visual representations illuminate the links and connections, presenting a fuller picture. It's like having a compass in your decision-making journey, guiding you toward the correct answer. 3. Professional Development.
As a subject in computer science, scientific visualization is the use of interactive, sensory representations, typically visual, of abstract data to reinforce cognition, hypothesis building, and reasoning. Scientific visualization is the transformation, selection, or representation of data from simulations or experiments, with an implicit or explicit geometric structure, to allow the ...
those drivers, including their place representation and place matching choices. We also provide a new definition of VPR based on the visual overlap - akin to spatial view cells in the brain - that enables us to find similarities and differences to other research areas in the robotics and computer vision fields. We
Place representation is how a place is portrayed or seen in society. We have already examined the idea that place representation can be manipulated by placemaking agencies via regeneration, reimaging and rebranding. The wider media, that is all means of communication including television, film, photography, art, newspapers, books, songs etc ...
Media representations play a crucial role in the place image context. Perceptions of places, including countries or tourist destinations, are influenced by the ways in which they are represented by the media ( Boisen et al., 2011). While images are constructed and communicated through multiple channels, including direct experience, word-of ...
Realistic and geographically-accurate representations of real-world places can serve as potentially powerful tools for addressing the aforementioned challenges and allow for resource planning that better incorporates people-place relationships (Newell and Canessa, 2015).Referred to in this study as 'geovisualizations' (and elsewhere as 'landscape visualizations' (Lewis and Sheppard ...
Table 5.1: Summary of the ways in which graphical representations can be applied in design, via different systems of correspondence. Table 5.2: Screenshot from the site gapminder.org, illustrating a variety of correspondence conventions used in different parts of the page. As an example of how one might analyse (or working backwards, design) a complex visual representation, consider the case ...
The latter type of art is known as representational art. Representational arts are artworks that depict real situations. The sources of inspiration for a representational work are generally real objects, people, or scenes. For instance, the painting of a cat is considered to be representational art because it describes a real-world subject.
Visualization Boards. Visualization boards, also called vision boards, are visual representations of your goals, intentions, and desires. Vision boards are typically poster-sized and include a collage-type arrangement of images that symbolize different facets of your goals and intentions.
Visual representation in the context of Computer Science refers to the analysis of images and the technologies used to create them. It is a multidisciplinary concept that encompasses philosophical, historical, and cultural aspects. ... and on the continuing place of visual arts and crafts in day to day laboratory work. 1.1 Visual Representation ...
Data visualization is the graphical representation of information and data. By using v isual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data. Additionally, it provides an excellent way for employees or business owners to present data to non ...
Visual representation is mainly the direct or symbolic reflection of something in the format of photos, the images, memes, graphics to represent people, things, a place, or a situation. Visual representation s are representation or demonstration of concepts accompanied by images or texts.
visual representation Crossword Clue. The Crossword Solver found 30 answers to "visual representation", 8 letters crossword clue. The Crossword Solver finds answers to classic crosswords and cryptic crossword puzzles. Enter the length or pattern for better results. Click the answer to find similar crossword clues .
Visual Place Recognition (VPR) is often characterized as being able to recognize the same place despite significant changes in appearance and viewpoint. VPR is a key component of Spatial Artificial Intelligence, enabling robotic platforms and intelligent augmentation platforms such as augmented reality devices to perceive and understand the physical world. In this paper, we observe that there ...
Visualization boards, also called vision boards, are visual representations of your goals, intentions, and desires. Vision boards are typically poster-sized and include a collage-type arrangement ...