An image is worth 1000 words by Juan C. Dürsteler [message nº
18] |Not always. Quoting Colin Ware, Director of the Data
Visualization Research Lab, 'Natural language is the most
elaborate and universal symbol system that we have'. We learn it
from our childhood and we use it constantly. For this reason
visualisation is necessarily a hybrid of images and words. How
and when to use words or images is one of the most important
decisions the visualisation designer has to take. Let's think of
the outstanding boom of mobile telephony, that allow us to speak
everywhere, whenever we want. Nowadays it's difficult to imagine
a more ubiquitous and easier to use communications system. The
power of language relies on the fact that with only one word we
can evoke images, sensations or complete experiences lived
previously. Verbal information and visual information excite
different zones of the brain. The language is essentially
sequential and dynamic. To read or to explain something unknown
beforehand requires a certain am