Karen Schriver (March 30, 1996)
Hi Folks,
I wonder if anyone out there could help me track down some references that show the benefits of what might be called "multiple representations," that is, of providing readers with more than one way of understanding something, for example, both visual and verbal, or visual and oral. I am also interested in the different kinds of affordances that alternative representations might provide readers, e.g., flowcharts might provide more visible structure than prose, well chosen typography might help readers infer ideas they might otherwise miss, or diagrams might be more helpful than itemized lists. Any ideas or stray thoughts would be most welcome.
Thanks!
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This question interests me greatly as in a previous 'incarnation' as a training consultant I firmly believed that offering information in a variety of media increased the likelihood of the ideas getting across. I had several reasons for this belief (but no grounded theory or data):
Consequently I produced several training packages that included printed text, video and audio tape, CAL and interactive video, face-to-face presentation.
I have searched my database for references that might help inform the issue and have come up with the following, all of which seem to have at least some bearing on the subject. The notes that follow are mostly my own and should not be taken to be either full abstracts or authoritative descriptions of the papers and articles described.
REFERENCES and NOTES
Barley, D., Carre, C.; Visual Communication in Science: Learning through sharing images; 1985, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. The effective use of visual materials in everyday teaching. " What is teaching? - messages are interpreted in different ways because the process of making sense of them is essentially an imaginative construction. Feelings matter. The medium matters."
Dixon, P.; The Processing of Organisational and Component Step Information in Written Directions,1987, J. of Memory and Language, 26, 24-25. Value of providing overviews before verbal or text instructions- e.g., draw two circles below a rectangle; or, to draw a wagon, draw two circles below a rectangle. Readers find 'organisational information' helpful. Dixon noted that less time was spent reading the instructions if readers already knew that the picture would depict a wagon.
Reynolds, L.;The legibility of printed scientific and technical information; in Information Design: the design and evaluation of signs and printed material, (R Easterby, H Zwaga, Eds)., 1984, Wiley, Chichester. The importance of visual presentation and layout on the reader (affects speed and accuracy of reading, impression of complexity, willingness to attempt etc). Caps vs. lower case; Typefaces; Type weight, bold and italics; Character size, line length, line spacing, letter spacing, word spacing, justification, columns, margins, paper size, reflectance, ink density. Based on a paper entitled 'Legibility Studies', journal of Documentation, 1979, 35 (4) 307-340, copyright ASLIB.
Talarico, R.B., Maisel, R.N.; Preferences Among Geometric Forms, 1964 April, Human Factors, 185-188. Research (USA) into peoples preferences (e.g. for shapes of displays etc) of various forms. Noticeable sex differences. Results: in order of preference: Men: stable equilateral triangle, circle, octagon, diamond, square, stable hexagon, parallelogram based on rectangle slanted to right, rectangle. Women: Diamond, stable equilateral triangle,circle, octagon, stable hexagon, square,parallelogram, rectangle.
Powers, M., Lashley, C., Sanchez, P., Shneiderman, B.; An experimental comparison of tabular and graphic data presentation, 1984, Int. J. Man-Machine Studies, 20, 545-566. Hypothesis - more usable information can be conveyed using a combination of graphical and tabular data than by using either form alone. Variables were memory (recall, non-recall) and form (graph, table or both). Results: Non-recall and tabular increased comprehension. Combinations of graphs and tables produced slower but more accurate performance. An executive should use the form with which they are most familiar and comfortable.
Spoehr, K.T., Lehnkuhle, S.W.; Visual Information processing, 1982, WH Freeman, San Francisco. Information processing. The visual system. Pattern recognition in humans - template models, prototype models, feature models, pattern recognition by computers. Organisation and visual processing - Gestalt, Hierarchical structure and global Vs. local processing, dimensional structure and attention. Perceiving several patterns at once. Word recognition. Picture processing and memory. Visual imagery and mental representation. Interactions between visual and verbal systems. Signal detection theory. Important consequences for eyewitness accounts and leading questioners.
MacKay, J.M., Barr, S.H., Kletke, M.G.; An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Decision Aids on Problem-Solving Processes, 1992, Decision Sciences, 23, 648 - 672. Decision processes, decision support systems, human information processing. Relatively few empirical studies have evaluated the effects of Decision Support Systems on problem- solving processes. Results of this study indicate that decision aids influence the problem-solving processes of decision makers. The effect of a decision aid is found to be contingent on familiarity with the decision aid, task familiarity and the interaction of these two factors.
Winn, W.; Encoding and Retrieval of Information in Maps and Diagrams, 1990 september, IEEE, NY, IEEE trans. Professional Communication, 33, 3, 103-107. Why graphics function the way they do, the basic constitution of a graphic item, the sequence in which the mind processes those items, the strategies people use to encode and remember information in graphics, the conjoint encoding of verbal and visual forms and the encoding of clusters of items and their labels.
Furnham, A., Gunter, B., Green, A.; Remembering Science: the Recall of Factual Information as a Function of the Presentation Mode. 1990, John Wiley, Chichester, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 203-212. Two studies showing that factual 'scientific' information is best recalled from print rather than audio-visual or audio only media. Limited samples. Self pacing and block arrangement of text suggested as helpful. Many previous experiments in the same area mentioned. Different results from different experiments. Caution against drawing conclusions from any one experiment.
Diamond, L., Lerch, F.J.; Fading Frames: Data Presentation and Framing Effects, 1992 sept/oct, Decision Sciences, 23, 5, 1050-1071. Framing effect:- Understanding, decision making etc is affected by the frame in which the information is presented. Framing effects are greater when the information is incomplete. Increasing the number of data points reduces or removes framing effects. Reduction of uncertainty :- decision makers prefer to choose the more completely described option; this completely outweighs framing effects. This paper examines recent research into the acquisition of information (Jarvenpaa, DeSanctis, Benbasat, Cleveland, McGill, Remus, Ives, Vessey, Galletta) and introduces framing and 'Prospect theory' (Kahneman and Tversky) - useful maths. Paper presents results of three experiments.
Frascara, J.; Design Principles for Instructional Materials; in Information Design: the design and evaluation of signs and printed material, (R Easterby, H Zwaga, Eds). 1984, Wiley, Chichester, 469-478. Piaget concluded that instrumental activity is the key factor in acquiring information. Frascara concludes that it is the similarity between input and output medium that is more important.
Vessey, I.; Cognitive Fit: A theory-based analysis of the graphs versus tables literature, 1991, Decision Sciences, 22, 219-240. Graphical and tabular representations present information in fundamentally different ways. Graphical formats emphasize 'spatial' information while tabular formats emphasize 'symbolic' information. Tasks can also be divided into spatial and symbolic, based on the type of information that facilitates their solution. Performance will be enhanced when there is a cognitive fit between the representational information and that required for the task. This paper makes sense of all the conflicting and indeterminate results of past research into the 'graphs/tables' controversy.
Jarvenpaa, S.L.; The Effect of Task Demands and Graphical Format on Information Processing Strategies, 1989, Management Science, 35, 3, 285-303. Results suggest that information presentation format influences the decision time and the selection of acquisition and evaluation strategies by influencing the cognitive costs and benefits of the task environment. Hypothesis 1. In acquisition of information, people will use a processing direction that minimises cognitive effort. 2. Congruence between task demands and graphical format will influence information evaluation direction... 3. ...and will impact decision time, decision accuracy, or both. Formats used were attribute arranged bar charts and bar charts arranged by alternatives.
Vamos, T.; Epistemology and Modeling. In "Modelling the innovation: Communications, automation and information systems" . Carnevale M , Lucertini M, Nicosia S.(Eds.), 1990, Elsevier science, Amsterdam, 401-410, Sensory representation, Mental representation, Linguistic representation, Computer representation. Mapping, modelling, uncertainty, relativity of concepts, cognition. Neural nets.
Walker, P., Hitch, GJ., Duroe, S. The Efect of Visual Similarity on Short-term-memory for Spatial Location - Implications for the Capacity of Visual Short-term-memory, 1993, ACTA PSYCHOLOGICA, 83, 3, 203-224. Experiments suggest that visual short term memory is capable of supporting the retention of several items (rather than being limited to preserving information about a single pattern as has been suggested by Phillips and Christie 1977). Visual short term memory also seems to be more involved in preserving the spatial rather than the temporal features of stimuli. Some support provided for Broadbent and Broadbent's (1981) overwriting hypothesis, which suggests that visual memory for a stimulus suffers interference from the presentation of a subsequent stimulus to the extent that they share visual features. The later stimulus having a detrimental effect on retention of the preceding stimulus and not vice versa.
Meyer, A.D.; Visual Data in Organizational Research, 1991, Institute of Management Sciences, Providence, R.I., Organization Science, 2, 2, 218-236. Urges organizational researchers to collect data from subjects in the form of pictures, diagrams, computer graphics, and other visual representations. Drawing on theoretical and empirical work in cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, linguistics and artificial intelligence, it presents a rationale for collecting visual data, provides examples and suggests research questions and settings where visual data may be preferable to verbal data.
Lohse, Gerald. L., Biolsi, Kevin., Walker, Neff., Rueter, Henry. H.; A classification of visual representations, 1994 Dec, Association for Computing Machinery, Communications of the ACM, 37, 12, 36-49. Examines the cognitive structure of graphics and offers a structural classification system for visual representations. Visualisation (defined by McCormick, DeFanti and Brown as "the study of mechanisms in computers and in humans which allow them in concert to perceive, use, and communicate visual information"), say the writers, spans many academic disciplines. A classification system should help structure future inquiry and provide concepts for developing theories and predict future research needs. They adopt a "structural" classification (ie focusing on the form of the image rather than it s content) as opposed to "functional" (focusing on the intended use). In their first research programme subjects rated 40 visual representations for similarity. From this the researchers identified six basic categories: graphs, tables, maps, diagrams, networks and icons. A second study examined the effect of having a graphic arts training on the way subjects classified images. The current study identifies features that characterise high-level categories of vis. representation eg: what characteristics distinguish maps from diagrams? 11 categories of visual representation emerge from this project in which subjects had to classify 60 different visual images in various ways. The 11 categories were: graphs, tables, graphical tables, time charts, networks, structure diagrams, process diagrams, maps, cartograms, icons and pictures. The study describes each of these and the type of knowledge conveyed by each class of representation.
Wilson, Richard. M. S., Hill, Andrew. P.; Learning Styles: A Literature Guide, 1994, Keele University, Working papers in management , 94/9, 22. Gives introduction to recent (last 10 years or so) work on "learning styles and learning style preferences" based on idea that different individuals have different preferences for styles of learning. Learning cycle defined by Kolb as having 4 stages: Acquisition of concrete experiences; Reflective observation; Formation of abstract concepts and generalisations; testing implications of concepts in new situations. This final stage provides new concrete experiences and thus the cycle continues. Different categories of learning style have been suggested depending on which stage of the learning cycle an individual favours, eg: Activist, Reflector, Theorist, Pragmatist. Tools have been developed to assess which category an individual comes into, although their validity has been questioned. Paper then gives abstracts for 22 different bits of work in this field, based almost entirely on work with accountancy students. Brief details of further 17 papers.
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I don't recall the authors or titles, but I took a seminar with Bill Horton where he discussed several empirical studies showing that people remember two or three times more information when presented a combination of text and graphics than when presented only text or only graphics.
You might contact Bill for the references (William Horton Associates, Boulder, CO).
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Karen:
This is such a well known source that you've probably already considered it, but...
Richard Saul Wurman's "Information Anxiety" has some interesting things to say about this. He claims that there are only five ways to organize things (which I remember with the mnemonic LATCH -- location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy or continuum). He calls them the five ultimate hatracks. He suggests that you can take a set of information and organize it based on each of these hatracks. The result is a better understanding of the information. It's all debatable, but I think it's insightful and it might help.
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You may find some interesting ideas in the publications in the field of automatic data presentation design. Here are some relevant references:
Mackinlay, J. and Genesereth, M.R.: Expressiveness and Language Choice. Data & Knowledge Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1985, pp. 17-29.
Mackinlay J.: Automating the design of graphical presentations of relational information. ACM Trans. on Graphics, 5(2), 110-141, 1986.
Roth S.F., Mattis J.: 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, 193-200, 1990.
Roth S.F., Mattis J.: Automating the presentation of information. Proc. IEEE Conf. on Artificial Intelligence Applications, IEEE Press, 1991.
Casner S.M.: A task-analytic approach to the automated design of graphic presentations. ACM Trans. on Graphics, 10(2), 111-151, 1991.
Also, try the diagrammatic reasoning site.
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Hi Karen,
I can only think of the following paper:
I am interested in that topic. Could you please send me any other references you might have or get?
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Hi Karen,
I have been doing researches on diagrammatic representation in which I guess studies on multiple representation have been explored the most actively. You might want to look at a Web site of Diagrammatic Representation. And, if you are interested, I would be happy to send you the copy of my very recent paper in which I discuss how external representations like architectural sketches do help designers/architects explore their design ideas.
Hope this info helps you.
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John Jay Miller (April 11, 1996)
Karen,
Here is one that was left out of the first round of replys.
Why Looking Isn't Always Seeing: Readership Skills and Graphical Programming, by Marian Petre, Communications of the ACM - July 1995
Introduced me to a good concept called secondary notation.
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Jay Rutherford (April 11, 1996)
Richard Saul Wurmann has another book out: "Information Architects" but it tends to be another pretty design book without much meaty content. Of course there are Edward Tufte's books: "Envisioning Information" and "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", but I'm sure you've heard of them. That's all I have for now.
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David Barker-Plummer (April 11, 1996)
Here at the Hyperproof project, we have been developing tools for teaching logic using diagrams. This appears to be an effective way of teaching (look at the courseware package "Hyperproof", Barwise J. and Etchemendy, J., CSLI press 1994, ISBN : 1-881526-11-9). Keith Stenning and his group at Edinburgh have done some psychological studies on the effectiveness of Hyperproof for teaching logic. Both the Hyperproof group and Stenning's group are represented on the "diagrams" WWW site, whose URL was included in earlier replies.
You might also be interested to know that there is a mailing list for people interested in discussion of diagrammatic representations. Mail diagrams-request@csli.stanford.edu to subscribe.
I hope that this helps.
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Tiziana Catarci (April 11, 1996)
The following papers are all related with the problem of having multiple *visual* representations in the database field.
Catarci, T., Chang, S.K., and Santucci, G. - Query Representation and Management in a Multiparadigmatic Visual Query Environment. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, Special Issue on "Advances in Visual Information Management Systems", Vol. 3, 1994, 299-330.
Haber, E.M., Ioannidis, Y.E., and Livny, M. - Foundation of Visual Metaphors for Schema Display. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, Special Issue on "Advances in Visual Information Management Systems", Vol. 3, 1994.
Cruz, I.F. - Querying Object-Oriented Databases with User-Defined Visualizations. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1994.
Catarci, T., Chang, S.K., Costabile, M.F., Levialdi, S., and Santucci, G. - A Graph-based Framework for Multiparadigmatic Visual Access to Databases IEEE Transaction on Knowledge and Data Engineering, to appear, June 1996.
T. Catarci, M.F. Costabile, M. Matera - Visual Metaphors for Interacting with Databases - ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, Vol. 27, N. 2, 1995.
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Karen Schriver (April 11, 1996)
I want to thank the many people who responded to my post about multiple representations. In the next few weeks, I will be compiling a file with all of the ideas people sent me. I have received many citations and pointers to individuals whose work may bear on the issue.
One thing I noticed in receiving suggestions was that not everyone who sent me stuff posted their ideas on the InfoDesign forum. I am not sure if there was a problem in getting your post to work or if you just decided--for any number of reasons--not to post it to the main forum. I wonder if the people who sent me notes privately would mind if I posted their suggestions in my compilation. This way more people could share what I found out. Please drop me a note and let me know if it would be okay to submit it to the forum as you sent it, or if you like, I can excerpt the main ideas.
That there were twice to three times as many private messages to me as there were to the InfoDesign forum made me wonder about whether we as a group might be treating the forum as a formal venue for airing opinions. That is, as a place where you say stuff you've already been thinking about for a long time. I think this is a bad idea because it has an unintended silencing effect on dialog. I'm afraid too many of us will just lurk but not speak. As an invisible community of practitioners, scholars, teachers, and researchers in areas relevant to information design, I think we (the people who subscribe to the InfoDesign forum) shouldn't be shy about two things:
(1) saying what we think even if it isn't yet polished. There have been some eloquent postings on the forum and maybe have set an implicit standard, but we don't have to be eloquent all the time. We shouldn't even have to take out the typos to post an idea.
(2) mentioning, when relevant, our own work. I WANT to know what you are working on. I don't even know who you are, but I know that for some reason you have subscribed to this forum. I'd like to know more about the projects and publications people are working on. I don't think it should be construed as bragging. It is through forums like this one that we can meet people who share ideas. This is important because there are few if any international conferences devoted to information design. This makes it hard for us to meet.
The InfoDesign forum allows us to meet. Thanks Yuri!
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