Course : Data Story Telling and Visualization

Unit 2 : Focus Audience Attention by

Eliminating Clutter

Prepared and Presented by

Mr. Satpute S.B.
Lecturer in Computer Engg.
 Contents and Major Learning Domain
• Contents
• Clutter is our Enemy- Cognitive load, Clutter
• Gestalt principals of visual perception, Lack of visual order
• Decluttering step by step
• Major Learning Domain
• Define Clutter
• Define Cognitive Load
• Explain Gestalt principals of visual perception
• Explain Decluttering steps
What is Clutter in Data Story telling ?
• Clutter dictionary Meaning-
• To fill or cover with scattered or disordered things that reduce
effectiveness.
• A crowded or confused mass or collection

• Clutter in Data Story Visualization

• These are visual elements that take up extra space but don't
increase understanding and contribute to cognitive load.
• Cognitive load can be thought of as the mental effort that’s
required to learn new information.
 Clutter is our Enemy
• We should identify clutter and eliminate it from our visual
communications
• The presence of clutter can create excessive cognitive load because the
processing of it takes up mental resources, but doesn't aid in
understanding
• Clutter makes our visuals appear more complicated than necessary.
• When our visuals feel complicated, we run the risk of our audience
deciding they don't want to take the time to understand what we're
showing—at which point we've lost our ability to communicate with
them.
Gestalt

• Gestalt is a German word that roughly means

"configuration" or the way things are put together to
form a whole object..
• Gestalt psychology looks at the human mind and
behavior. It is a theory that looks at human perception
Gestalt Principles of visual perception
• Gestalt Principles are principles/laws of
human perception that describe how
humans group similar elements, recognize
patterns and simplify complex images when
we perceive objects.
• Designers use the principles to organize
content on websites and other interfaces so
it is pleasing and easy to understand.
• Gestalt Principles are an essential part
of visual design.
• There are six Gestalt design
principles:
• Principle of proximity
• Principle of similarity
• Principle of enclosure
• Principle of closure
• Principle of continuity
• Principles of connection
 Proximity

 The proximity principle is the

idea that placing similar
design elements close
together produces a more
effective visual design.
 The proximity principle in
psychology describes the
way relationships are formed
between people or things
close to one another.
 Similarity
 The Gestalt Principle of Similarity
states that when items share visual
characteristics, they are perceived as
more related than objects that are
dissimilar.
 This is often due to the fact that our
human eyes tend to perceive similar
elements in a picture, image, or design
as a complete shape or group, even if
these elements are incomplete.
 This is because the brain tries to create
a link between similar elements, and
our eyes naturally fill in any missing
gaps.
 The Gestalt Principle of Closure states
that when an individual looks at a
complex arrangement of visual
elements, they tend to look for a single
and recognizable pattern.
 If we are looking at an image, and it has
missing parts, our brains will fill in the
blanks to complete the image so that
we can recognize the pattern.
Continuity

 The Gestalt Principle of Continuity

states that we are more likely to see
continuous and smooth flowing lines
rather than broken or jagged ones.
 This is because once our eyes begin to
follow something, they will continue to
travel in that direction until it
encounters another item or object..
Enclosure
 The Gestalt Principle of Enclosure
states that we perceive objects as
belonging together when they are
enclosed by anything that forms a
visual border around them (for
example, a line or a common field
of color).
 This enclosure causes the objects
to appear to be set apart in a
region that is distinct from the
rest of what we see.
 And our eyes strongly induced to
see group of enclosed objects
Connection
 The Gestalt Principle of
connection states that We tend
to think of objects that are
physically connected as part of
a group.
 Our eyes probably pair the
shapes connected by lines.
 Lack of Visual Order
 The design which causes visual
stress to the users as cluttered
design.
 Cluttered design includes too
many data points, unwanted
design element, and unreadable
text.
 Cluttered designs are ones that
lack visual order and increases
cognitive load as users struggle
to parse the visual landscape
and understand which parts are
important.
Techniques to improve visual perception in design
1. Visual Cues:
 It is one of the most important
ways to improve visual perceptual.
 visual cues to communicate and
give directions to the user.
 it might be something as simple as
a little icon which helps the user
to relate to his everyday things.
 visuals are processed in the brain
at 60,000 times the speed of text.
 Brain acknowledges and
remembers shapes may it be
icons, images illustrations first
because simple visual images can
be remembered and recognized
directly.
2. Directional Arrows
• It help with direction as what is the next step user needs to perform.
3. Spacing and kerning
• Right spacing between characters and paragraphs are also all very important especially
when it is a context-heavy screen.
4. Highlight the line
• Highlighting the parts of the sentence which gives the user more context so that he need
not go through the entire paragraph to understand it.
5. Eliminate visual distractions
• Never distract the user by design elements which are of no use, Avoid unnecessary
decorations in design. Remove as much of visually confusing layouts as possible,
especially when it’s an interactive screen where the user needs to perform actions.
6. Outline boundaries
• Highlight elements like toasters, pop-ups with a shadow just to give the depth between them.
7. Break visual activities into small steps
• When working on an interactive screen, present one piece at a time and hide unneeded pieces
allowing the user to focus on one element at a time reducing his cognitive load.
Decluttering Step by Step

 Clutter makes data stories harder to read and puts additional cognitive
load as well as distracts the audience from the main message.
 Take an example of chart. We will eliminate Clutter elements from it.
• Remove chart borders
• Remove gridlines or axes
• Clean up axis labels
• Label data directly (as opposed to using a legend)
• Remove data markers
• Use special effects (bold, underline, italics, shadows) sparingly
Original Graph
1. Remove Chart Borders

• Chart borders are usually

unnecessary.
• Instead, think about using
white space to differentiate
the visual from other elements
on the page as needed.
2. Remove gridlines
3. Remove Data Markers
4. Clean Up axis Labels
5. Label the Data Correctly
6. Leverage consistent color
Before After
Focus Audience Attention

• To make a data effective, you must guide the audience.

• Preattentive attributes, such as size, colour and position on the page are
interesting artifacts to signal what is important and direct your audience’s
attention.
• Preattentive attributes determine what information catches our attention.
• This is important in visualization because it enables us to direct our viewer’s
attention towards the most important information in our visual.
• Preattentive attributes in-
• Text
• Color
• Size
• Position
Preattentive Attributes in Visualization- Example
• Suppose you are an e-commerce company and you want to analyze
your customer’s feedback data from the last quarter. You create a
simple chart that looks like this.
Preattentive Attributes in Visualization- Example
• The Color is one of the most powerful preattentive attributes and
when used wisely, it can drive your viewer’s attention to what you
want them to focus on.
•
1. Preattentive Attributes in Form
• The category of form generally encompasses the shape and dimensions of how your data is
represented, both on their own and in relation to the rest of the data in your visualization.
• The attributes of form include line length, line
width, orientation, size, shape, curvature, enclosure, and blur.
2. Preattentive Attributes in Color
• The category of color includes the hue and intensity of the colors in your data.
• Using different hues can draw contrast between different parts of your data.
• Similarly, if you want one part of your visualization to stand out, the intensity of the colors in that
section can be increased.
3. Preattentive Attributes in Position
• The category of position includes both the two-dimensional position of the data in your
visualization, and the spacial grouping of your data points.
• Spacial grouping can be thought of as how tightly or loosely packed a cluster of data is.
4. Preattentive Attributes in Motion
• The last category of preattentive visual attributes is motion, which consists
of flicker and direction of motion.
• Think of how quickly you notice a flickering traffic light, or the flicker of the turn signal of a driver
in front of you.
• if the direction of the motion of an object is distinct from the direction of the objects around it, it
will tend to draw our attention. Think of a crowd of people walking in the same direction, but one
person walking the opposite way. That person will grab attention amongst the crowd.
•Thank You ….

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