Slashdot Mirror

I'll bet Edward Tufte would have something to say on the topic... http://www.edwardtufte.com/ Has anyone been to one of the "Presenting Data and Information" seminars? Any feedback?

HA, words are cheap!

You could set out on a literary expedition of your own and find out whether Edward R. Tufte did sufficiently honour that woman. Actually a cursory glance over "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" didn't turn up anything. Maybe there is something to be found in here:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

There's an interesting discussion thread on the Ask ET section of the Edward Tufte web site that starts with the Nightingale charts. Note that the thread started in March of 2002. I'm not sure why this is making headlines now.

I was the one that modded it as a troll (and by posting here I am undoing it). It is now modded +5 Funny, and yeah in hindsight it is funny. But at the time I modded it Troll, it was +2 Insightful, which I thought was an abomination. Insightful?

I was thinking in particular over all of the critisism powerpoint (and other packages) have received for making it so easy to produce manipulative and misleading graphics. Plenty of stuff on Edward Tufte's site, eg on Nasa abusing powerpoint to mislead management, resulting in poor decisions, in particular the Columbia accident.

Here's another sample and another sample.

Edward Tufte's forum also has a discussion on Nightingale's diagrams.

Get his books, and if you friend's boss will swing for his one-day course, all the better.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index

PDF created in PowerPoint.

Have they learned nothing???

Rich

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB

Why on earth is this report ... a PowerPoint "deck"?

Rich.

Edward Tufte's favorite graphic, of course:

Napoleon's March

A big part of software design is towards the ultimate goal of displaying data and information in a clear, informative manner. So why not display one of the finest examples of that?

And who cares that it's not "high tech"?

My first reaction to this was "what would Edward Tufte do?"
I found the following link discussing the topic: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000M0&topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E.T.
The article discussed the best is a dark background with a bright font, but the conversation seemed to be too "environmental" as it it depends on the viewers local light setting instead of being generally independent of any local lighting.
What if I am "forced" to operate using a light/bright background and darker contrasting font?
In my opinion, experience, and local preference I have found dark grey font as easy on my eyes. It is my opinion but I do a lot of reading online with many fonts.

Know the author Ed Tufte.

Know what HCI stands for.

Know your audience and let them evaluate Throwaway Prototypes.

If you are looking for a book to teach you UI design, you are misguided. If you are looking for a Creative Commons and/or Open approach to UI design, register a domain called "Principles of UI Design" and launch a Wiki on it, then license it with the license you desire (but I would recommend CC0).

If all goes well, this thread will serve as a good starting point for getting ideas/content to populate your new Wiki with.

To some extent, things this was also a communications problem. Edward Tufte has analyzed the Challenger and Columbia disasters and concluded that they largely occurred because critical information became obfuscated as it moved up the decision tree. Take a look at his analysis of the Columbia disaster:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E.T.

Challenger has similar issues. I can't find a direct cite for it but this page:

http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html

does an OK job of excerpting the ideas.

Good sources for design by example:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/
how to present quantitative information and get to the essence: less is more.

http://www.garrreynolds.com/
many examples on messages and negative space

http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/
intelligent checklists of what to do and stunningly great what not to do examples. Excellent walk through for "the boss" who might really, really, want to have that musical gif with the dog playing the banjo on the first page along side the waving flag/support our troops light show...

Test: Consider too how customers, et.al.,will access the site.

Make the dog food, eat the dog food. If the users are coming through a network jinking like a moth in flight from a bat, that big ass wonderful "thing" may well and truly blow chunks. Demo on the LAN, or on the desktop: bad thing. What's the implementation environment?

If users are urban with high capacity networks, fatter images etc. can be less of a problem. But if you're trying to reach, say, people "on the road" or in dial up land, test with their environments. I recall one rule of thumb that suggested that 4 seconds is about the design budget for the first page to show up.

In turn, consider also testing with at least a couple of current and backlevel browsers to catch major pains.

Go for basic function/message first. Avoid the scripting etc. until the site is stabilized and (most)people smile.

Is it to support the operations of your business as well as communicate to your customers and partners? The ops/innards pieces, to me at least, are very different in terms of look, function, and feel. Separate these requirements from the messaging; creeping functionality kills.

Who Is The Decider?

Who is writing content? Who is editing content?

Frame up a few questions such as "who should we look like vis a vis competition, which customers and prospects are of interest, what's our brand, etc." If you get a glazed look go for the neat gif mailboxes and spinning blinkenlights and declare a victory. If the idea of integrated messaging and corporate (organizational) image are not big in the culture, well shucks, I'd go for beige on beige.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Edward Tufte has great ideas on graphic design in general. Most are not specifically directed at web graphics, but some of the topics in his Ask E.T Forum cover this. He responds to problems that include how to format a list properly, how much information to put on one screen, and the design of forms intended for user input.

I completely agree. The iPhone weather widget shows everything I need to know.

Tufte's proposed redesign of the weather widget is rhetoric. He doesn't take into account the performance of the network or the device in his design. I don't want to wait a few seconds to download an animated map and then kill the battery displaying it. And why do I need this animated map anyway? It just shrinks the more relevant information to an unreadable size. Apple got it right...or at least better. This shows just how good Apple is at UI design. Even the 'Pro's' can't beat them at times. I'm not forgiving them for the Finder or other inconsistencies and problems in OS X though.

Felipe on this page brings up the valid point that low temperatures should be displayed before high temperatures in the form of a bar graph. Too bad Tufte didn't make this valid assertion in his revised weather widget. It would have been redeeming.

"...showing the low first seems to keep the time relationship in tact [sic]: on most (but not all days) the overnight low for a given calendar day occurs before the daytime high."

I get the distinct feeling that Tufte understands data visualisation, but not interface design.

Highly related things.

He criticises the stock app for being "cartoony" and "PowerPoint" like, which seems again a mere preference rather than an objective comment, uses words designed to provoke an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual one.

He has a well known article on the the evils of powerpoint, and how it often acts as an obstacle to effective data communication rather than a vehicle of it. He argues in some detail why PP is bad, and his comments here reflect those same arguments. Whether you find them convincing or 'mere preference' will certainly depend on you, but suggesting they are there for emotional response only seems pretty clearly incorrect.

But I don't see how x thousand points of data points in a tiny little graph is of use. First of all, if you fit thousands of data points into a single graph, it's going to need a damn big piece of paper before I'm capable of distinguishing them, combined with a ruler and a set square if I want to get the value for a specific data point.

It is of use in that instead of, say, 52-week high & lows, you get a graphical, easy to digest timeline that shows not only highs and lows, but the trend for an entire year. It's like the major stock graph shown at the bottom of the widget, except for every entry all at the same time. By using some knowledge about perception you've allowed the viewer to obtain a huge amount of information easily, quickly, and in a small space. The point is not to be able to see what a price was on Mar 13th (the big graph at the bottom also fails to do that very well), but to see where the price was in Mar relative to the rest of the year.

Second, why would I want this level of detail on a phone app? Personally, I find the iPhone's red light / green light view combined with percentage points useful - it jumps out at you when e.g. the market crashes as it did recently.

Well first of all, you have it already in the form of the large graph at the bottom. Next, why would you not want that information when it doesnt cost anything. You can still have a current price, can still color it however you'd like, but by adding a small graphic that replaces essentially empty space, you get much more info for free.

The "modest data graphic cartoon" conveys just as much information to the viewer as his "image resolution" with thousands of data points, and is the kind of thing a portable stocker checker would be used for. Tufte is letting his expertise get in the way of understanding the use case

False, the sparkline conveys much more information. And what a stock checker is used for depends entirely on what the stock checker provides. Your notion of what is common 'use' is getting in the way of understanding his point.

He criticises the iPhone browswer for having 10% of the screen used for buttons, but in his own designs he comments "about 90% of the image is substance". Clearly he's happy with that 10% sacrifice when it's his own work. And if you look at the designs, you'll note that in each case there is a navigation bar of some form at the top or bottom of the page. What a hypocrite.

Because clearly an iPhone screen and a web browser share both size, resolution & forms of interaction. So rules for one are bound to be identical to rules for the other.

In particular, his "the information is the interface" comment just betrays his inability to think outside his old area of expertise. Computer applications do not simply present information content, and also go beyond interacting with it -they can take actions, manipulate the content, and work with its metadata. The interface must take that into account.

Firstly he has been involved with computer interface design for a long time, so your accusation is a

If he is such a great designer, why is his website so ugly and confusing (and vainglorious)?

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

I get the distinct feeling that Tufte understands data visualisation, but not interface design. These are different things, and he's letting his expertise in one area make him think he can make pronouncements from on high in other areas and comes out with some real bullshit as a result.

His "to clarify, add detail" rule could be applied to his comment on the photo browser. He says they should be grey not white, and only one pixel wide, but gives no reason why. I'd like some detail to clarify why he says that! It would not fit more images onto the screen, it would add no information content, it's barely even an aesthetic change to the design. It's news to me that arranging images against a plain white background is a bad approach. I've met a lot of smart people that like to "show off" by making detailed comments like this, without any actual substance or empirical evidence to back up what is simply their own preference. Tufte seems to be doing so here.

He criticises the stock app for being "cartoony" and "PowerPoint" like, which seems again a mere preference rather than an objective comment, uses words designed to provoke an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual one. He claims his app has more detail - which of course it should when it only has three stocks, not six. But I don't see how x thousand points of data points in a tiny little graph is of use. First of all, if you fit thousands of data points into a single graph, it's going to need a damn big piece of paper before I'm capable of distinguishing them, combined with a ruler and a set square if I want to get the value for a specific data point. Second, why would I want this level of detail on a phone app? Personally, I find the iPhone's red light / green light view combined with percentage points useful - it jumps out at you when e.g. the market crashes as it did recently. In Tufte's example, it's impossible to tell what recent market changes have taken place, and there is no obvious way to quickly see data for e.g. the last week. The "modest data graphic cartoon" conveys just as much information to the viewer as his "image resolution" with thousands of data points, and is the kind of thing a portable stocker checker would be used for. Tufte is letting his expertise get in the way of understanding the use case - all his catchphrases are there for the converted, but his use of them here just annoys me.

Here's a nice little piece - take a look at his site at http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T. He criticises the iPhone browswer for having 10% of the screen used for buttons, but in his own designs he comments "about 90% of the image is substance". Clearly he's happy with that 10% sacrifice when it's his own work. And if you look at the designs, you'll note that in each case there is a navigation bar of some form at the top or bottom of the page. What a hypocrite.

Finally, he's very keen on getting rid of computer admin debris. The problem is, he treats looking at a web page the same as looking at a picture. But when I'm looking at a picture, I don't want to bookmark it (it's already in my collection), and I don't want to make a webclip of it. I don't need the back button with photos, because I can navigate via the photo collection. But I do need those functions in the browser, and I need them large enough to easily hit with my finger. We're all used to scrolling down webpages, so having a mere 90% of the screen available, and an intuitive flick of a finger to scroll down, is perfect. Commenting that the button bar should at least be transparent strikes me as just one of those condescending little compromises some people like to make when they know they won't convince the other side of "the right answer". It would be bad interface design to have application buttons hovering over hyperlinks, making it distinctly ambiguous what would happen when you touched that bottom 10% of the screen.

In particula

I have all four Tufte books and I have read a few of the other interface books suggested by others. Books like Raskin's The Humane Interface and Norman's The Design of Everyday Things tend to focus on "widgets" for lack of a better term, specifically the minimization of modes, steps, and things that must be kept in the head to perform a given action, and the design of natural mappings of controls to what is being controlled (favorite example: stovetop burners are arranged in a square; majority of burner controls are linearly placed with some sort of picture indicating which burner is affected; vastly simpler is a square layout of the controls matching that of the burners; my grandmother almost started a fire due to this confusion). These are essential of course, but Tufte's books bring another much needed perspective: an interface is primarily a presentation of information, and the presentaion should be guided by library science and information design principles.

More to your question, I agree with the other poster to start with Display, though I've read the most from that one and simply skimmed the others. Display seems to focus mostly on plots of scientific data. The next two have things like the weather animation depicted on the cover of Visual Explanations and neat train schedules from around the world which may or may not be more relevant depending on what you're doing. I attended Tufte's travelling lecture, and I believe I still have his list of sections, pulled from the first three books, most relevant to interface design; I may be able to dig it out later in the day.

Tufte's message board is a wealth of information on dozens of related topics. Apparently Tufte published an out of print booklet, Visual Design of the User Interface, much of which became a part of Envisioning Information.

I have all four Tufte books and I have read a few of the other interface books suggested by others. Books like Raskin's The Humane Interface and Norman's The Design of Everyday Things tend to focus on "widgets" for lack of a better term, specifically the minimization of modes, steps, and things that must be kept in the head to perform a given action, and the design of natural mappings of controls to what is being controlled (favorite example: stovetop burners are arranged in a square; majority of burner controls are linearly placed with some sort of picture indicating which burner is affected; vastly simpler is a square layout of the controls matching that of the burners; my grandmother almost started a fire due to this confusion). These are essential of course, but Tufte's books bring another much needed perspective: an interface is primarily a presentation of information, and the presentaion should be guided by library science and information design principles.

More to your question, I agree with the other poster to start with Display, though I've read the most from that one and simply skimmed the others. Display seems to focus mostly on plots of scientific data. The next two have things like the weather animation depicted on the cover of Visual Explanations and neat train schedules from around the world which may or may not be more relevant depending on what you're doing. I attended Tufte's travelling lecture, and I believe I still have his list of sections, pulled from the first three books, most relevant to interface design; I may be able to dig it out later in the day.

Tufte's message board is a wealth of information on dozens of related topics. Apparently Tufte published an out of print booklet, Visual Design of the User Interface, much of which became a part of Envisioning Information.

Donald Norman Design of Everyday Things (ISBN-13: 978-0385267748) He will get you thinking about the implications of your interface design; this classic may be hard to find but he has other books out as well. While his examples focus on mechanical objects the thought process and criticisms provide insights into how to think about the end user in your design and avoid become someone "Who won an award" for their design. Once you read teh book you'll get what I mean. http://www.jnd.org/

Bruce Tognazzini Tog on Interface (ISBN-13: 978-0201608427) A bit dated but the concepts and idaeas are what matters. He has a website as well as other books. http://www.asktog.com/

Finally, there are classics by Edwin Tufte you may want to checkout as well. He focuses on displaying information (mostly quantitative) in a manner to support understanding; and hates PowerPoint type presentations with a passion. Tufte has a website as well. http://www.edwardtufte.com/ His one day course ie excellant.

For those whoever worked with Lotus Freelance Graphics, it is still a better product then PPT. You could create your own templates, your own layouts, adjust colors easily on the fly. Everything you ever wanted in PPT but just much more flexible. That said, PPT rules the world. Unfortunately its not very good a delivering powerful multi-dimensional information.

For a good article on PowerPoint and its lack of information density, check out Edward Tufte's discussions on the subject http://www.edwardtufte.com/. PowerPoint while not evil itself is evil in its execution mainly due to its inability to fit more then a few information elements on the page.

Good presentation style is like good graphic design and typography: the audience doesn't even notice it, they just take in the content efficiently and come away with the intended impression.

I think you are right in that point, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but it doesn't necessarily transmit the needed information. I believe visualization is one of the most important tools in research, not for displaying information to others, but to understand the result and implications of our own research. I use Gnuplot to check my results. Very often a glance at the graphic is enough to tell us something is wrong. "Hey, what's that spike over there?"

OTOH, when you need to transmit information, graphics should be carefully thought out. Unfortunately, engineers and scientists aren't graphic artists, and artists normally don't know enough about technology to create the most useful graphics.

For me, a good author in this field is Edward Tufte, specifically this book and this one and this one. In one of these, Tufte demonstrates how the cause of cholera was discovered using a street map of London and how the O-ring failure that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger was known beforehand, but was ignored because the engineers were unable to present their arguments in a clear way.

 

I think you are right in that point, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but it doesn't necessarily transmit the needed information. I believe visualization is one of the most important tools in research, not for displaying information to others, but to understand the result and implications of our own research. I use Gnuplot to check my results. Very often a glance at the graphic is enough to tell us something is wrong. "Hey, what's that spike over there?"

OTOH, when you need to transmit information, graphics should be carefully thought out. Unfortunately, engineers and scientists aren't graphic artists, and artists normally don't know enough about technology to create the most useful graphics.

For me, a good author in this field is Edward Tufte, specifically this book and this one and this one. In one of these, Tufte demonstrates how the cause of cholera was discovered using a street map of London and how the O-ring failure that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger was known beforehand, but was ignored because the engineers were unable to present their arguments in a clear way.

 

I think you are right in that point, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but it doesn't necessarily transmit the needed information. I believe visualization is one of the most important tools in research, not for displaying information to others, but to understand the result and implications of our own research. I use Gnuplot to check my results. Very often a glance at the graphic is enough to tell us something is wrong. "Hey, what's that spike over there?"

OTOH, when you need to transmit information, graphics should be carefully thought out. Unfortunately, engineers and scientists aren't graphic artists, and artists normally don't know enough about technology to create the most useful graphics.

For me, a good author in this field is Edward Tufte, specifically this book and this one and this one. In one of these, Tufte demonstrates how the cause of cholera was discovered using a street map of London and how the O-ring failure that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger was known beforehand, but was ignored because the engineers were unable to present their arguments in a clear way.

 

I think you are right in that point, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but it doesn't necessarily transmit the needed information. I believe visualization is one of the most important tools in research, not for displaying information to others, but to understand the result and implications of our own research. I use Gnuplot to check my results. Very often a glance at the graphic is enough to tell us something is wrong. "Hey, what's that spike over there?"

OTOH, when you need to transmit information, graphics should be carefully thought out. Unfortunately, engineers and scientists aren't graphic artists, and artists normally don't know enough about technology to create the most useful graphics.

For me, a good author in this field is Edward Tufte, specifically this book and this one and this one. In one of these, Tufte demonstrates how the cause of cholera was discovered using a street map of London and how the O-ring failure that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger was known beforehand, but was ignored because the engineers were unable to present their arguments in a clear way.

 

Also pick up the full 32-page version from his website or from Amazon. It's absolutely worth the 7 bucks he charges for it.

Now that link is a bit of a read, but a very striking introduction on influencing decision-making with presentation techniques, even if this costs other people's lives.

Doesn't look like it. Basically, if I want to plot, say X vs. time coincident on the same chart with Y vs. distance, I can't do that now.

http://www.onemotoring.com.sg/publish/onemotoring/ en/lta_information_guidelines/faqs/other_faqs/traf fic_management.html#MainPar_0009

Quoting one response...:
"...Over a period of one year, we found that the effect of the countdown timer was only felt during the initial four months of the trial, that is, there was a reduction in the number of vehicles beating the red light.[emphasis added] Following that, we found that motorists' behaviour had reverted to when the countdown timer was not installed."

Another good (albeit a few years old now) discussion can be found here...
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-ms g?msg_id=0000O7&topic_id=1

Food for thought nonetheless, it would be nice to see this put in place in the 1st world. Let's bring traffic signaling into the 21st century. I can imagine countdown timers in conjunction with cameras would definitely cut down on red-light-runners.

I like Tufte's thoughts on moderating, particularly his point about avoiding "the chronic internet disease of 'All Opinions, All the Time.'" Different websites have different goals of course, but there is nothing inherently wrong with refusing to allow anyone to publish any opinion on your website. Tufte's own forum is much lower traffic than Slashdot, but it has the interesting property of discussions that are years long, and the majority of posts are on-topic and very useful. Slashdot discussions more than a day or two old are all but dead. One thing I see often enough that it bugs me is a post like, "So and so behaves in ways X, Y, and Z" and a followup post correcting it, "No, it's most like X, Y, and W"; further posts support the correction or provide links to further info, but as a reader I'm still stuck reading the whole conversation when I'm more interested in the correct information that could have fit into a single paragraph. Discussion sites tend to shy away from editing and consolidating correct information, preferring to leave everything as individual posts. It would be a lot of work to implement, and perhaps even impossible, but I get the impression that the reason nobody tries is not due to the difficulty but because individual posts are treated as sacred; any editing is "censorship". At the very least, one should not be afraid to delete the GNAA trolls and the like at -1...

Admittedly, editing of comments may be a waste of effort on Slashdot. But many tech blogs will post an article and some points will be corrected in the reader comments. The blog publisher will update the article yet leave the comments as is, creating a confusing page of comments that refer to an article that is no longer there. Is there any reason, other than it's too much work, to not delete the comments that no longer make sense and credit in the article those who made corrections?

"bullets on my slides are extremely brief, usually no more than 4-5 words"

Jane said, Here is a ball.
See this blue ball, Sally.
Do you want this ball?

Sally said, I want my ball.
My ball is yellow.
It is a big, pretty ball.

(from The Cognitave Style of PowerPoint by Edward Tufte.

I hope you aren't basing this on the dreaded "seven plus or minus two" rule of human memory. This is an oft misused fact because it leaves out the detail that the seven things are unrelated things. A presentation will presumably have many inter-related elements, allowing humans to keep much larger sets of data in memory.

I'm not saying you do this, but the stereotypical business presentation has points such as "increase market share", "synergize this" and other ambiguous statements. As Edward Tufte notes, it is better to specify what exactly will increase sales and use more concrete statements in general.

The main problem with PowerPoint, and all slide-exclusive presentations including those made with Keynote or transparency sheets, is the temporal separation of information and the low resolution of the display. Showing slide after slide while hiding previous slides hampers the ability of the audience to make comparisons and recall previous points. Simply printing out the slides as a handout is no substitute because each individual slide is designed for the low resolution of a projector and may have but a few key points and not much meat anyway.

Better perhaps would be to design a paper handout with paragraphs and high resolution plots (not chart candy) so the audience can peruse the data at their leisure while the speaker walks them through the information and highlights the key points. The audience is free to read ahead a bit, or spend more time on a particular graphic if necessary. The projector can be used for pointing to certain areas of a graph or showing other supplemental material.

Sure, it may be more work. But you should see slides that convinced NASA to land the Columbia. These suffer from additional problems, but are certainly worth a look. Perhaps these have "too much text", but it's more a problem with the organization of that text than the amount of it. Complex ideas cannot always be described in five words. And the fact that old slides are whisked away to reveal new slides certainly didn't help.

Tufte's objection is entirely to do with the replacement of the basic unit of argument (the sentence) with the bulletpoint. Sounds like you're in the clear.

(Excellent screenname btw)

And now, as bullet points for those that don't speak english any more:

* Basic unit of text no longer sentence
* Bullet point abbreviates thought
* Discourages argument
* Kills flow

And it's even time to report the Stalin picture: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus of Yale has previously written about the problems of Powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-ms g?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1 , and gives the example of how the 1986 Challenger explosion could have been prevented if NASA didn't rely so heavily upon it for presentations. In summary it's about how Powerpoint is a poor tool for communication, As opposed to just text, or speech.

Right. I read Tufte's rants on PowerPoint when I was in college, and that was quite a few years back. I agree with his disappointment with PowerPoint. Of course people can make worthwhile presentations with it. The problem is that PowerPoint sort of encourages people to focus on everything but the actual information.

Powerpoint destroys the ability to think, both in presenters and recipients. Edward Tufte has been banging this drum for a decade, I'm glad someone's caught up with him: https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-m sg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1

See also: information presentation expert Edward Tufte's essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.

Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.

Not to mention the graphical quality is, well, a little sparse. It took me longer than it should have to get a sense of this 'rhythm' that he refers to. I know, I know - searches are text, but come on, Edward Tufte would be all over this one.

I want color, dammit!

It's funny that you mention him, as I'd been looking at his website a few days ago and thinking that while he's clearly excellent at creating visual displays of mathematical data, his (and/or Dariane Hunt's) web design leaves something to be desired.

This is the link labeled Books takes you here:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

First, his navigation isn't consistent.

If you look at the different between the alt tags and the images used in it, the alt tags are almost completely lowercase. On the other hand, the images use all caps. There's also the issue of "Ask E.T." and "ET Writings..."

It's hard to tell due to the anti-aliasing, but to me the kerning looks a little off in some of the buttons.

The "New" icon does not look solidly attached to the "ET Writings..." so it's hard to tell what is new. Skipping the graphic aspect and calling it "Recent Writings..." would be clearer to me.

Drop shadows are used inconsistently, in that the majority (but not all) of the book cover images have them while the page images do not. His right margin is different on the main page than on the subpages, which makes the navigation look out of alignment on the main page.

The site inconstently switches between placing a comma before and/or in a three+ item lists.

But that's all minor nitpicky stuff.

However, there is something badly broken about the navigation bar's using images for everything (besides the fact it's horrible for people with bad vision who need to enlarge the font in order to be able to read). While it does include alt tags for each, all of the spacing is built into the images, not the HTML code, so the navigation looks like:

"Homebookscoursesposters and graph paperfine..."

Then there's what I consider to be the major gotcha of the design - the way he lays out the different books he's written. When I first looked at the page, I thought he'd only written a single book. Then I noticed that there were links to six other pages.

First, this is different than the other categories on his site. Clicking on Fine Art or Posters and Graph Paper, you get a list of each item in that category. While I might argue that a splash page for each category with a thumbnail and abstract of each with a link to a more detailed view might be better, it works. The books page in non-obvious to a casual viewer and breaks from the rest of the site. It also annoyingly jumps around to different locations on each page, rather than remaining in a static position the way a key navigation tool should. In the worst case, it doesn't appear on the first page worth of display, even at 1600x1200 resolution. Users should not have to scroll to find basic navigation.

This leads to another inconsistency - the books section treats his four books, a textbooklet, an essey, and Ms. Tufte's book all as the category of books. The checkout page, however groups his four books together, and the other three scattered in separate locations on the page.

Lastly, his course page looks like it was designed to be a nice poster, not a web page.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

The four cover images are not the same height and the difference jumps out to me. (Nitpicking again)

More importantly is the two column design looks like a throwback to being limited to a single piece of paper rather than embracing the possibilities that hypermedia offers. The second column is distracting when first trying to read the page, due to the business it adds to the page as well as the fact it contains a number of attention drawing red links. That content could easily have been moved onto a separate registration page, simplifying the main course page and adding useful white space and space where additional information could have been added.

Do I think he's eminently qualified to speak and write on visual design a

It's funny that you mention him, as I'd been looking at his website a few days ago and thinking that while he's clearly excellent at creating visual displays of mathematical data, his (and/or Dariane Hunt's) web design leaves something to be desired.

This is the link labeled Books takes you here:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

First, his navigation isn't consistent.

If you look at the different between the alt tags and the images used in it, the alt tags are almost completely lowercase. On the other hand, the images use all caps. There's also the issue of "Ask E.T." and "ET Writings..."

It's hard to tell due to the anti-aliasing, but to me the kerning looks a little off in some of the buttons.

The "New" icon does not look solidly attached to the "ET Writings..." so it's hard to tell what is new. Skipping the graphic aspect and calling it "Recent Writings..." would be clearer to me.

Drop shadows are used inconsistently, in that the majority (but not all) of the book cover images have them while the page images do not. His right margin is different on the main page than on the subpages, which makes the navigation look out of alignment on the main page.

The site inconstently switches between placing a comma before and/or in a three+ item lists.

But that's all minor nitpicky stuff.

However, there is something badly broken about the navigation bar's using images for everything (besides the fact it's horrible for people with bad vision who need to enlarge the font in order to be able to read). While it does include alt tags for each, all of the spacing is built into the images, not the HTML code, so the navigation looks like:

"Homebookscoursesposters and graph paperfine..."

Then there's what I consider to be the major gotcha of the design - the way he lays out the different books he's written. When I first looked at the page, I thought he'd only written a single book. Then I noticed that there were links to six other pages.

First, this is different than the other categories on his site. Clicking on Fine Art or Posters and Graph Paper, you get a list of each item in that category. While I might argue that a splash page for each category with a thumbnail and abstract of each with a link to a more detailed view might be better, it works. The books page in non-obvious to a casual viewer and breaks from the rest of the site. It also annoyingly jumps around to different locations on each page, rather than remaining in a static position the way a key navigation tool should. In the worst case, it doesn't appear on the first page worth of display, even at 1600x1200 resolution. Users should not have to scroll to find basic navigation.

This leads to another inconsistency - the books section treats his four books, a textbooklet, an essey, and Ms. Tufte's book all as the category of books. The checkout page, however groups his four books together, and the other three scattered in separate locations on the page.

Lastly, his course page looks like it was designed to be a nice poster, not a web page.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

The four cover images are not the same height and the difference jumps out to me. (Nitpicking again)

More importantly is the two column design looks like a throwback to being limited to a single piece of paper rather than embracing the possibilities that hypermedia offers. The second column is distracting when first trying to read the page, due to the business it adds to the page as well as the fact it contains a number of attention drawing red links. That content could easily have been moved onto a separate registration page, simplifying the main course page and adding useful white space and space where additional information could have been added.

Do I think he's eminently qualified to speak and write on visual design a

(This isn't directed at you, just poor design) Readers may not like to scroll, but they hate waiting for page loads even more. At least that's what Edward Tufte implied at a conference. Also see discussion at Tufte's website. Some interesting points raised. I suspect that the real issue is the page loading speed, rather than the action required to get there. Once loaded, scrolling is instantaneous. Paging could be, but would require different formats (e.g. PDF) or cleverer browsers (I thought I heard something about a Firefox plugin that could convert "next page" links into a single large page?).

Since you list humorous books, I'm not sure what your definition of "technical" is. I'll assume you meant "non-fiction". Here's a few titles that are recommended for anyone who has a brain and wants to think hard about the state of the world.

• Books by Edward Tufte on how graphs, PowerPoint presentations, and other sources of technical information can mislead rather than inform (and how to correct this).
• _A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper_ or any other books by John Allen Paulos which focus on how a misunderstanding of mathematics has consequences for our society.
• The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
• On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by West Point psychologist, military historian, and former Army Ranger Lt. Col. Grossman. Anyone who thinks that they would be able to "do what must be done" and kill anyone who threatened their family ought to read this. Also recommended reading for all the hawks out there that are so anxious to send our young out to fight unnecessary wars.

GMD

Being aware of what paper can do goes a long way toward reducing the amount of information you actually print. While different subjects offer different opportunities, focusing on graphic means of communicating ideas and data and combining that with the resolution of paper can often mean that you can compress dozens of electronic slides into a single piece of paper.

Read some of Edward Tufte's work, it is a good place to start.

Well, there was this interesting commentary, but it was already too late by then. Sad.

In case anyone was wondering, Tufte uses a Mac:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-ms g?msg_id=0000Ej&topic_id=1

Here's a link to a long interview with Tufte.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/s15427625tcq1304_ 5.pdf

The interviewer asked him about why he self-published:
"After moving to Yale University, I finished the manuscript in
1982. A publisher was interested but planned to print only 2,000
copies and to charge a very high price, contrary to my hopes for
a wide readership. I also sought to design the book so as to make
it self-exemplifying--that is, the physical object itself would
reflect the intellectual principles advanced in the book. Publishers
seemed appalled at the prospect that an author might
govern design."

So, here's a guy writing a book on how to present information and the publisher thinks he knows better. LOL. Naturally, Tufte chose to keep control of the process. In other words, we are to do as he does. (as opposed to do as he says.) This approach reminds me of a lecture our principal used to give. The lecture was on how to lecture. He gave seven different techniques. He delivered each technique by using that technique. This is what Tufte refers to as self-exemplifying. Our library doesn't know it yet but they are buying copies of his books. :-)

he's full of it, he said teaching school children powerpoint is better than teaching them to smoke!
Obviously the two are about the same