Information Design: research and practice. Important new book

Information Design: research and practice published by Routledge

I have a chapter in this substantial and important book. My chapter focuses on the visualization of historical time, illustrated by key examples from the eighteenth century when the modern timeline was invented. We are fortunate in having not only surviving examples of printed timelines from the period but also explanations written by their makers, revealing the ambitions they had for visualisation. An important divergence is evident, between those who want to use rhetorical visual metaphors to tell a graphical story, and those who prefer to let the data ‘speak for itself’, allowing patterns to emerge from the distribution of data points across a surface. I trace this history through to modern debates about the role of rhetoric in visualisation. Does data talk, or do we need to talk on its behalf?

Weigel, Christoph. 1720. Discus chronologicus. Nuremberg. 51cm × 49cm (detail). Collection and photo: Stephen Boyd Davis.

Citation: ‘To see at one glance all the centuries that have passed’ - early visualisations of historical time. In: Black, A., Luna, P., Lund, O. and Walker, S (eds). Information Design: research and practice. London: Routledge. 3-22.

About the Book

Information Design: research and practice
Edited by Alison Black, Paul Luna, Ole Lund, Sue Walker

750 pages | 314 Color Illustrations

Information Design provides citizens, business and government with a means of presenting and interacting with complex information. It embraces applications from wayfinding and map reading to forms design; from website and screen layout to instruction. Done well it can communicate across languages and cultures, convey complicated instructions, even change behaviours. Information Design offers an authoritative guide to this important multidisciplinary subject. The book weaves design theory and methods with case studies of professional practice from leading information designers across the world. The heavily illustrated text is rigorous yet readable and offers a single, must-have, reference to anyone interested in information design or any of its related disciplines such as interaction design and information architecture, information graphics, document design, universal design, service design, map-making and wayfinding.

Part 1 

Chapter 1. Early visualizations of historical time [my chapter]
Chapter 2. Images of time
Chapter 3. William Playfair and the invention of statistical graphs
Chapter 4. Ship navigation
Chapter 5. Technical and scientific illustration
Chapter 6. The lessons of Isotype for information design
Chapter 7. Marie Neurath: designing information books for young people
Chapter 8. Future, Fortune, and the graphic design of information
Chapter 9. Some documents for a history of information design
Chapter 10. Moral visualizations 

Part 2 

Chapter 11. Graphic literacies for a digital age
Chapter 12. Visual rhetoric in information design
Chapter 13. Multimodality and genre
Chapter 14. Interactive information graphics
Chapter 15. Social and cultural aspects of visual conventions in information
Chapter 16. Textual reading on paper and screens
Chapter 17. Applying science to design 

Part 3 

Chapter 18. Does my symbol sign work?
Chapter 19. Icons as carriers of information
Chapter 20. Warning design
Chapter 21. Diagrams
Chapter 22. Designing static and animated diagrams for modern learning materials
Chapter 23. Designing auditory alarms
Chapter 24. Design challenges in helping older adults use digital tablets
Chapter 25. On-screen colour contrast for visually impaired readers
Chapter 26. Contrast set labelling
Chapter 27. Gestalt principles
Chapter 28. Information design research methods
Chapter 29. Methods for evaluating information design
Chapter 30. Public information documents 

Part 4 

Chapter 31. Choosing type for information design
Chapter 32. Indexing and information design
Chapter 33. When to use numeric tables and why
Chapter 34. Wayfinding perspectives
Chapter 35. Designing for wayfinding
Chapter 36. The problem of ‘straight ahead’ signage
Chapter 37. Park at your peril
Chapter 38. Indoor digital wayfinding
Chapter 39. Visualizing storyworlds
Chapter 40. Exhibitions for learning
Chapter 41. Form follows user follows form
Chapter 42. Information design & value
Chapter 43. The LUNAtic approach to information design
Chapter 44. Information design as a (r)evolutionary educational tool
Chapter 45. Design + medical collaboration
Chapter 46. Developing persuasive health campaign messages
Chapter 47. Information design in medicine package leaflets
Chapter 48. Using animation to help communication in e-PILs in Brazil
Chapter 49. Medical information design and its legislation

Paperback to be published 7 January 2017. Available for pre-order £50.00.

Routledge page about the book.

Olivia at Wellcome Data Week

Olivia Vane, doctoral student in chronographics at the RCA, is working all week at the Wellcome Library.  Data Week is an exploration of the Library’s digital catalogue.  It brings together a multidisciplinary group of researchers, data wranglers and developers in a week-long project to experiment and play with a selection of the Library’s digital data, from medical officer of health reports dating back more than 150 years, to over 3000 AIDS posters.

Throughout the week they are exploring novel forms of research and engagement that the digital can offer. By Friday, there should be several prototype examples of how Wellcome’s digital data can be used in new and exciting ways.

See the Wellcome Data Week blog.

Two papers for Design and Time at DHS Conference 2016

All three PhD students who have worked at the Royal College of Art with me on visualising historical time will be participating in the Design History Society conference 2016, which this year is on the theme of Design and Time.  Olivia Vane and Sam Cottrell are continuing their studies, while Dr. Florian Kräutli, who graduated in July, is now at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science / Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Our aim in these presentations will be to raise the level of debate about dates. Since chronology moved from being a proper discipline in the seventeenth century to a kind of silent scaffold for knowledge in the eighteenth century, we have all tended not to take dates seriously.

Our presentations are a plea for a deeper engagement between disciplines in tackling these problems, where dates are obviously valuable data, but also a problem.  Visualisation reveals ‘good’ information - info we hoped and expected to see - but also ‘bad’ information that forces us (all) to think more deeply about the way we position objects in time, both as historians and as designers.

The conference is at Middlesex University where, as it happens, my work on these themes began, helped by two enterprising Masters students, Emma Bevan and Aleksei Kudikov.  Speaking of which, we will also have the pleasure of presenting with Zoë Hendon, Head of Collections at the university’s Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, who supported that project back in 2009 and who has collaborated so generously with us again recently.

Links

• Conference website
• Panel on visualising time - data and the archive
• Design History Society 
• Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
• Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture

Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Collections

On Thursday 14th July, Olivia Vane and I presented a paper 'Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Collections' at the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London conference held at the British Computer Society. It was co-authored with our recent graduate Dr. Florian Kräutli, now of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Here's the abstract:

The paper explores visualisation of 'big data' from digitised museum collections and archives, focusing on the relationship between data, visualisation and narrative. A contrast is presented between visualisations that show 'just the data' and those that present the information in such a way as to tell a story using visual rhetorical devices; such devices have historically included trees, streams, chains, geometric shapes and other forms. The contrast is explored through historical examples and a survey of current practice. A discussion centred on visualising datasets from the British Library, Science Museum and Wellcome Library is used to outline key research questions.

And here are a few of the illustrations we used:

Christoph Weigel. 1720. Discus Chronologicus. Nuremberg: Weigel. Collection and photo: Stephen Boyd Davis

Stream of Time, or Chart of Universal History from the German of Strass. London: 1849. Collection and photo: Stephen Boyd Davis

Barbeu-Dubourg, Jacques. 1753. Chronography or Depiction of Time. Rare Books Collection, Princeton University Library (used with permission). Photo: Stephen Boyd Davis.

Florian Kräutli. 2015.  Britten's Poets - visualisation for Britten-Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh UK.

Olivia Vane. 2016.  Visualisation of Medical Office of Health Reports data at Wellcome Library: 'typhoid carrier'.

Olivia Vane. 2016.  Visualisation of Medical Office of Health Reports data at Wellcome Library: 'typhoid carrier' (detail).

We concluded with some research questions about data visualisation and narrative:

• What form(s) should we adopt?
• To what degree can a story be brought out using computation?
• How can we support rapid apprehension from uncluttered displays, but still provide depth of information where it is needed?
• What literary narrative devices can be translated into visual terms?
• What forms of inquiry are best framed in narrative terms?
• Who narrates?

And we were very pleased to receive the EVA 2016 'Best Paper' award!

Olivia Vane, Stephen Boyd Davis at EVA 2016.  Photo: Sam Cottrell.

Read the paper on the BCS website here.

Sensing Time event at the V&A, Saturday 18 June 2016

On Saturday 18 June, I will be contributing a talk to a study day in London jointly organised by the V&A and the Science Museum.

Though the day is called 'Sensing Time: The Art and Science of Clocks and Watches' I won't be talking about either clocks or watches!  Instead I will focus on the 'mechanical' aspects of diagrams of historic time. Here is the blurb for the day:

Time is of the essence. This truth is visible, tangible and audible in the masterpieces of horology in collections across the globe. This interdisciplinary study day will bring together international expertise from curators, makers and conservators. It will explore the different priorities for collecting clocks and watches from exquisite decoration, to materials, mechanics and technological innovation.

It looks like a superb array of presentations and speakers. Here is the outline:

• 10.20 Introduction and Welcome  Matty Pye, Department of Learning V & A
• 10.30 Stillness or Movement: Sight and Touch  Chair: Tessa Murdoch, Deputy Keeper Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass V&A
• Making Time: How to make a clock or watch Anna-Rose Kirk and James Harris, Independent clock makers
• An Eighteenth-Century Astronomical Clock  Peter Plaßmeyer, Director Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
• The Henlein Watch: an iconic timepiece taken apart   Thomas Eser, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 
• 11.50 Sound and Rhythm: Hearing  Chair: Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections, V&A
• Pyke organ clock restoration  Malcolm Archer and Matthew Read, West Dean
• Bells and the rhythms of urban life  Paul Glennie, University of Bristol
• Different types of striking in domestic clocks   Oliver Cooke, Curator Horology, British Museum
• 13.00 Lunch Break
• 14.00 Making sense of the passage of time   Chair: Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer, Royal Observatory Greenwich
• Times change: two Augsburg Clocks in the Gilbert Collection  Heike Zech, Senior Curator, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, V&A
• Signs of Astrology on early modern clock and watch dials   Jane Desborough, Curator, Science Museum
• Narratives of time: timelines  Stephen Boyd Davis, School of Design, Royal College of Art, London 
• 15.20 Refreshments
• 15.50 Beyond the senses: Collecting Time  Chair: Tim Boon, Head of Research, Science Museum
• Collecting time, presenting time in the Kunstkammer Vienna   Paulus Rainer, Deputy Director, Kunstkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• 16.30 Discussion and Q&A
• 17.00 Close 

Date
Saturday 18 June, 10.00 – 17.00
Venue
The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre

More event information here.

"The Idea of a Measurable Space" - Joseph Priestley's 1765 Chart of Biography

On 1 June, I will be talking at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London, on "The Idea of a Measurable Space": Joseph Priestley's 1765 Chart of Biography

My central question will be: why did Priestley’s Chart of Biography take the form it did? I'll trace the answers through the contemporary visual and intellectual culture, and through some of Priestley's personal characteristics.  I'll also ask what is unique about Priestley's approach - correcting some common errors - and highlight what is truly special about his contribution.

Date
1 June 2016, 17:15 - 19:15
Venue
Wolfson Room I (NB01)
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU

More event information here.

Forthcoming talks on chronographics

On 20 May, Florian will be presenting at the Digital Humanities Early Career Conference 2016 "Mapping the Scope & Reach of the Digital Humanities" at King's College London.

The paper focuses on the relationships between the digital, humanities, design, and research.

Full conference programme here.




On 1 June, I will be talking at the Institute of Historical Research on "The Idea of a Measurable Space": Joseph Priestley's 1765 Chart of Biography

My central question will be: why did Priestley’s Chart of Biography take the form it did?  I'll trace the answers through the contemporary visual and intellectual culture, and through some of Priestley's personal characteristics.  I'll also ask what is unique about Priestley's approach - correcting some common errors - and highlight what is truly special about his contribution.

Date
1 June 2016, 17:15 - 19:15
Venue
Wolfson Room I (NB01)
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU

More event information here.



On Saturday 18 June, I will be contributing a talk to a joint study day between the V&A and the Science Museum.

Though the day is called 'Sensing Time: The Art and Science of Clocks and Watches' I won't be talking about either clocks or watches!  Instead I will focus on the 'mechanical' aspects of diagrams of historic time. Here is the blurb for the day:

Time is of the essence. This truth is visible, tangible and audible in the masterpieces of horology in collections across the globe. This interdisciplinary study day will bring together international expertise from curators, makers and conservators. It will explore the different priorities for collecting clocks and watches from exquisite decoration, to materials, mechanics and technological innovation.

Date
Saturday 18 June, 10.00 – 17.00
Venue
The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre

More event information here.



On 14 July, Olivia Vane and I will be presenting a paper by myself, Olivia and Florian at Electronic Visualisation and the Arts - 'Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Collections'.

The paper explores visualisation of “big data” from digitised museum collections and archives, focusing on the relationship between data, visualisation and narrative. A contrast is presented between visualisations that show “just the data” and those that present the information in such a way as to tell a story using visual rhetorical devices; such devices have historically included trees, streams, chains, geometric shapes and other forms. The contrast is explored through historical examples and a survey of current practice.  A discussion centred on visualising datasets from the British Library, Science Museum and Wellcome Library is used to outline key research questions.

Dates
Tuesday 12th July - Thursday 14th July 2016
Venue
BCS
First Floor
The Davidson Building,
5 Southampton Street
London
WC2E 7HA

More event information here.

 

Dr Florian Kräutli

A quick note to celebrate the award yesterday of PhD to Florian, who has worked so intensively for three and a half years on his investigations of critical chronographics. No amendments, no changes to be made - an immediate pass.

Dr Kevin Walker, Prof Sue Walker, Dr Florian Kräutli, Prof Paolo Ciuccarelli, Prof Stephen Boyd Davis, Dr Michael Selway. Photo: Delfina Fantini van Ditmar

My thanks to...

• Dr Kevin Walker, head of Information Experience Design, RCA and chair of the exam board
• Professor Sue Walker, of Reading University, external examiner
• Paolo Ciuccarelli, of Politecnico di Milano, external examiner
• Dr Michael Selway and Dr Michael Stapleton of System Simulation Ltd, external supervisors
• Prof Ashley Hall and Prof Miles Pennington for providing a scholarly ‘home’ for Florian in Innovation Design Engineering
• ... and of course Florian himself for his deep engagement with a subject to which I am so committed! 

Florian’s PhD was funded by EPSRC grant EP/J502169/1 and System Simulation Ltd.

Countess Markievicz and Dublin Mean Time

Among the many things I did not know about the Easter Rising 100 years ago in Ireland – until today – was that Ireland had its own standard time until 1916. It was an effective symbol of London scorn to abolish the subject country’s time – one that duly caused anger in Ireland.

According to an article from a couple of years ago in the Irish Times, ‘the House of Commons in London introduced Greenwich Mean Time in Ireland and abolished Dublin Mean Time, which was 25 minutes behind.’

Countess Markievicz, one of the rebel leaders in the 1916 Rising and the leading woman in the Irish struggle for independence, complained bitterly about the measure in a letter which only came to light in 2014.

Until the late 19th century, time in Ireland and Britain was defined locally according to sunrise and sunset. But the development of railway timetables and telegraphy required time to be standardised. In 1880, the House of Commons introduced legislation to enforce Greenwich Mean Time, but Ireland – where the sun rose 25 minutes and 21 seconds later than at Greenwich – had Dublin Mean Time. That ended with the Time (Ireland) Act 1916.

Countess Markievicz was born Constance Gore-Booth. She was sentenced to death by the British for her role in the Rising but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. She was released a year later, in 1917, under a general amnesty. A few months after writing her letter about oppressive time, she became the first woman elected to the House of Commons.

She had acquired her name upon marrying a Polish émigré, Count Casimir Markievicz, in 1900. She was one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).

Babbage at Wroughton

Last Wednesday, 10th February 2016, Stephen and Olivia went to Wroughton, the reserve collection of the Science Museum to look at examples of the Babbage collection.

The papers held by the Science Museum Library and Archives relate principally to Charles Babbage’s calculating engines. They consist of most of the surviving technical material relating to his designs for automatic calculating machines such as the Difference Engines and the Analytical Engine. The archive contains three types of material:

1. Babbage’s notebooks 
2. engineering drawings 
3. notations, which are principally 'walk throughs' or 'traces' of micro-programs for various models or plans of the Analytical Engine.

The collection is unusual in that a large portion of it has been digitised - which is where we come in.  What kinds of sense can be made from this heterogeneous material, what stories can it tell?

Olivia Vane - new PhD student in chronographics

Olivia joined the RCA as a research student in chronographics in October 2015. She joins Florian Kräutli (now completing his studies) and Sam Cottrell (who is half way through his studies in an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with The National Archives).

Cultural institutions have become swamped by digital data. Digitising the objects, images and texts in their collections has resulted in millions of electronic records. The question is, how can museums / archives / libraries make sense of it all? Olivia’s research explores how data visualisation may be used to reveal patterns and insights, and to present stories about collection data. A particular emphasis is competing and conflicting narratives.

Olivia is currently working with partners at British Library Labs, Science Museum and Wellcome Library.

Olivia’s background is multi-disciplinary, bridging science, visual design and the humanities. She holds a BA (1st class) in Natural Sciences and an MSci (1st class) in History and Philosophy of Science, both from the University of Cambridge.

Since graduating, she has worked as a designer: leading the graphic design team for a large charitable organisation in London; producing visual and user experience design for a web start-up; and designing anthologies for literary projects. Her current research focuses on programming, data and visualisation.

Olivia is funded by AHRC studentship AH/L503782/1 through LDoc, the AHRC London Doctoral Design Centre consortium.

Olivia’s new blog: http://research.oliviavane.co.uk/

Article in Visible Language: Idea and Image of Historical Time

Final-year PhD student Florian Kräutli and I have recently published a paper in Visible Language looking at some issues in visualising historic data – especially legacy data belonging to institutions.

The paper addresses the relationship between design and the digital humanities, asking what each can learn from the other and how they may make progress together. The focus is critical making in chronographics — the time-wise visualisation of history — based on the authors’ historic research and current practice in visualising collections of cultural objects and events. This is situated in historic and contemporary contexts, arguing that the eighteenth century origins of the modern timeline have useful insights to offer in terms of objectives and rationale. The authors advocate a critical approach to visualisation that requires both design and digital humanities to face up to the problems of uncertainty, imprecision, and curatorial process, including in relation to time itself.

The whole issue (49:3 December 2015) of the journal is Critical Making: Design and the Digital Humanities.  It was ably guest-edited by Jessica Barness and Amy Papaelias. Here is the table of contents:

• GUEST EDITORS' INTRODUCTION
• Critical Making at the Edges  Jessica Barness, Amy Papaelias
• THEORY AND SPECULATIONS
• Meta!Meta!Meta! A Speculative Design Brief for the Digital Humanities  Anne Burdick
• Clues. Anomalies. Understanding. Detecting underlying assumptions and expected practices in the Digital Humanities through the AIME project  Donato Ricci, Robin de Mourat, Christophe Leclercq, Bruno Latour
• Writing Images and the Cinematic Humanities  Holly Willis
• Beyond the Map: Unpacking Critical Cartography in the Digital Humanities  Tania Allen, Sara Queen
• FORMS AND OBJECTS
• The Idea and Image of Historical Time: Interactions between Design and Digital Humanities  Stephen Boyd Davis, Florian Kräutli
• Critical Interfaces and Digital Making  Steve Anderson
• Making Culture: Locating the Digital Humanities in India  Padmini Ray Murray, Chris Hand
• Prototyping the Past  Jentery Sayers
• visual book review + essay: Book Art: a Critical Remix of The Electric Information Age Book  Steven McCarthy