2 posts tagged with "data-ink"

In a previous post I mentioned a book that introduced to me the concept of the "data-ink" ratio - the amount of ink used to represent data vs the total amount of ink used to draw the entire image. At that time I was working for a travel company, and I was so enamoured with this book that I instantly went off and started designing prototypes for alternative ways we could present our users with the results of their searches.

None of my ideas were adopted: I couldn't find a champion amongst the middle managers. But that didn't make me think they were no good. One of my favourites was what I'm going to talk about today - flight search results using a scatter chart.

Searching for flights​

When I search for a flight I most often have:

• a general idea of when I want to depart
• a budget
• a personal list of airline preferences
• a preference for getting there quickly, but
• an aversion to flights longer than 15 hours

Many years ago a manager of mine introduced me to a fantastic book about data visualization, entitled The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward Tufte:

You should go to a bookstore and buy this book, it's great.

One of the core concepts in this book is that of the "data-ink" ratio - the amount of ink used to represent data vs the total amount of ink used to draw the entire image. There are many examples of this throughout the book, and it's a concept that has stuck with me.

FIFA World Cup​

We recently dusted off our FIFA World Cup Visualizer and released it as an app that people can use in their sites. In this app we're particularly pleased with the group stage visualization, because we think it has a satisfying data-ink ratio:

For a given team in the group stage, this visualization lets the user track 10 discrete pieces of information: