Setlur Vidya - Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization

1. Chapter 5
2. Chapter 7
3. Chapter 16

1. Introduction
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 2
4. Chapter 3
5. Chapter 4
6. Chapter 5
7. Chapter 6
8. Chapter 7
9. Chapter 8
10. Chapter 9
11. Chapter 10
12. Chapter 11
13. Chapter 12
14. Chapter 13
15. Chapter 14
16. Chapter 15
17. Chapter 16
18. Chapter 17

Vidya Setlur

Bridget Cogley

Copyright 2022 by Vidya Setlur and Bridget Cogley. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada and the United Kingdom.

978-1-119-81008-7
978-1-119-81010-0 (ebk.)
978-1-119-81007-0 (ebk.)

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In memory of Kelly Martin, who knew true beauty and laughter.

(VS)
To Amodmy support and life partner
and
Naren and Narsimwhose unconditional love constantly helps me be a good mother and a better person

(BC)
To Mikethe ultimate dancer, driver, and super-spouse
and
Dominicwho gives me new eyes to the world and the freedom to play

This book would not have come together if it were not for the support and encouragement of so many people. We both would like to thank Patrick McCormick, Brandi Beals, and Madison and Milwaukee Tableau User Groups (TUGs) for your impeccable timing and brilliance for putting us in the right place at the right time. Without all of you and a famous blue Fiat, this book would never have happened.

We are also grateful to so many individuals who have helped with this project: October 22, 2020, to be precise, is when our book journey started after Jim Minatel, the associate publisher at Wiley, responded to our book proposal. We thank him for believing in us and being a good partner during the book-writing process. We'd like to thank our project manager, Brad Jones, for patiently doing all the content wrangling, keeping us honest with deadlines, and gently hustling us with his positivity. Also, thanks to Pete Gaughan, Barath Kumar Rajasekaran, and Melissa Burlock for helping with operations to move the content along to finish. Jock Mackinlay, our technical editor, has been an awesome sounding board, applying his vast experience in both academia and industry to enrich so many parts of this book. We thank Pat Hanrahan for graciously writing the foreword and inspiring us to think of how semantics with visual representation can help make sense of the world.

Vidya would like to thank her mother, Jayashree Raghavan, for basically taking over the kitchen during the writing process, texting her lunch and dinner menus so that she could emerge from her she-cave to eat. Her father-in-law, Rangaswamy Setlur, has been her personal cheerleader all these years, reading the manuscripts and providing kind notes of encouragement. She owes a great amount of gratitude to all her research colleagues for their wisdom and intellect and to her friends and neighbors, who have generously shared their joy and pride during the writing process. Finally, the long days just felt a little sweeter with Milo, her pandemic pup, with his playfulness and love.

Bridget would like to thank Mike Cogley for bringing tea and driving the Fiat where this all started and Dominic Cogley for the laughs and inventions while writing this book. The practitioner sections are stronger due to the extra eyes from Allen Hillery, Michelle Frayman, and Sarah Pallett. Bridget would be remiss if she didn't thank her mother, Sheree McKay, for teaching her to have a keen eye and to put things in the right place. Friends and family lent their support, even if it made no sense to them. The patience is much appreciated. Colleagues past and present made this process easier, providing much-needed motivation and encouragement. No book acknowledgment is complete without celebrating the cats that keep the laughs and fuzz coming: Fluffles, Minx, and Jaxx.

And we thank you, the reader, for giving these ideas a space to have this conversation.

Vidya Setlur is the Head of Research at Tableau Software. Prior to joining Tableau, she worked as a principal research scientist at the Nokia Research Center for seven years. She earned her doctorate in 2005 at Northwestern University. Her area of expertise is in natural language processing and computer graphics. The goal of her work is to develop new computer algorithms and user interfaces that enhance visual communication and understanding of the semantics of the underlying data. Since joining Tableau Research in 2012, Vidya has worked on various projects and prototypes ranging from semantic icon encodings to chatbot interfaces. She has also explored analytical conversation using principles of language pragmatics that led to Tableau's first natural language feature, Ask Data.