Yep, it's a subject near and dear to my heart. I've got all the Tufte and Few books on my shelf. And I was reading that stuff right when the Boom was happening, so it was extra galling to see all these bananaheads profiting off their contempt for the hard-earned standards of the craft.
What most 'corporate leaders’ don’t realize is that UX is a data-driven field that transforms large amounts of information into simple, easy-to-understand formats. The confusion arises from people believing they’re doing the “right thing” by making quick, assumed decisions about what they think the data shows, but all they end up with is a crude, basic solution that only appeals to decision makers. Then, someone with genuine expertise in data visualization comes along, only to be laid off because “they weren’t as flexible” or “they weren’t like hipster McPaint face.”
The goal of making complex data understandable still has a long way to go. There's a lot of damage to fix before we can start presenting clear, transparent data instead of huge blobs and tiny font messages. It seems they're stuck in the PowerPoint era and aren’t fully utilizing design tools for meaningful purposes.
What gets me is that there are some dumb people out there who think we are at the "singularity" or that humans will be replaced by robots, but data visualization is what enables exactly the kind of non-linear thinking that humans excel at and that AI (or at least, LLMs for sure) will never do.
Hey that historigraph is dope!
Actually didn't know you were in data viz. Agree with everything you said. So little mastery of the craft.
Yep, it's a subject near and dear to my heart. I've got all the Tufte and Few books on my shelf. And I was reading that stuff right when the Boom was happening, so it was extra galling to see all these bananaheads profiting off their contempt for the hard-earned standards of the craft.
What most 'corporate leaders’ don’t realize is that UX is a data-driven field that transforms large amounts of information into simple, easy-to-understand formats. The confusion arises from people believing they’re doing the “right thing” by making quick, assumed decisions about what they think the data shows, but all they end up with is a crude, basic solution that only appeals to decision makers. Then, someone with genuine expertise in data visualization comes along, only to be laid off because “they weren’t as flexible” or “they weren’t like hipster McPaint face.”
The goal of making complex data understandable still has a long way to go. There's a lot of damage to fix before we can start presenting clear, transparent data instead of huge blobs and tiny font messages. It seems they're stuck in the PowerPoint era and aren’t fully utilizing design tools for meaningful purposes.
What gets me is that there are some dumb people out there who think we are at the "singularity" or that humans will be replaced by robots, but data visualization is what enables exactly the kind of non-linear thinking that humans excel at and that AI (or at least, LLMs for sure) will never do.