InfoD-Cafe: Timetables and Tufte

[Zenon Kulpa]

> From infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org Wed Oct 20 07:55:42> From: David Sless <d.sless at communication.org.au>
> 
> A few month ago I promised Michael Andrews that we would make a  
> contribution to the debate about Tufte's advice. At long last, here it  
> is. It's in the form of another case history.
> 
> This one is about the design of timetables and it question's some of  
> the advice offered by Edward Tufte.
> http://www.communication.org.au/cria_publications/publication_id_91_439407953.html
> 
An interesting piece of research.
Although the result is rather expected - for the needs of hurrying
commuters certainly numerical timetables are more useful than linear 
(even for me, despite that I am strongly visually oriented).
Generally, there is no universally good design for representing
any particular given data (e.g., timetable) - besides the data, 
an equally important factor is the goal of the representation 
(the intended use of it). Accurate lookup of data values 
is a different goal than overall assesment and comparison 
of data (this roughly corresponds to the numerical/linear 
timetable difference).

The importance of taking into account the goal when designing
a representation was analyzed in detail e.g. by Roth and Mattis:

S.F. Roth, J. Mattis. Data characterization for intelligent graphics
presentation. In: Human Factors in Computing Systems - VII (Proc. 
of the Conf. on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI'90)). 
ACM Press, (1990), 193-200. 

A short introduction can be found in my diagrammatics pages, 
namely on the page:
http://www.ippt.gov.pl/~zkulpa/diagrams/twd97.html
see especially the pictorial examples at:
http://www.ippt.gov.pl/~zkulpa/diagrams/vl-goal.gif

As far as I can remember (correct me if I am missing something), 
Tufte does not mention that question in his books, 
presenting his advices as universal rules to be applied 
in all circumstances.

-- Zenon Kulpa
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