Do you want your data viz message to reach your audience fast? Want it to get there almost faster than the speed of thought? Dig deeper on a human ability known as pre-attentive attributes.
Just what are they? Why are they there? The why goes back to evolution, when humans didn’t use tools to make charts or navigate the world, they used eyes and experience. And dangers were not limited to 12 slice Pie charts attempting to depict a startling conclusion. Long ago the features let you navigate the world, find the food you needed and avoid the predators that wanted to make you into food. Motion, super easy to see. Bit of the right colour or shape (of say fruit), useful to see. Distilled down for a more modern world, the attributes are ways to organise visual information – not just data but anything – in a way that will bypass conscious thought to be understood in the brain. Needless to say they have huge implications in data viz, but I’ll offer a shout out to Datasaurus-Rex for designing a CV format with pre-attentive attributes in mind.
What do they look like? Commonly shown in the below image, this one borrowed from https://help.tableau.com/current/blueprint/en-us/bp_why_visual_analytics.htm. You can read more there, as well as out ever reliable source of information, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-attentive_processing.
Ten attributes above – looks like an ideal time to start a mini series on how how you can apply the features in data viz, and beyond. Stay tuned as I delve deeper into the features, build up a viz to showcase them all, add details on how you can use each of them in more detail. And of course add some interactivity , after all what’s a data viz without the ability to interact and explore?
As a teaser, a good sample I came across on Tableau Public for you to see some features in action, start your inspirations and ideas flowing. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jason.knudson/viz/Pre-AttentiveAttributes_16558437991060/Pre-AttentiveAttributes
Got a favourite feature in mind from the above 10 you’d like to see. Drop a comment on the name to bump it up the list to work on.
Vizology 
Loved reading this blog! The introduction was simple and relatable, drawing me in the the rest of the content, but the highlight for me was definitely the 2 CO2 emission viz – I can’t say which one I prefer, cos I kind of liked the simplicity of the first one, while appreciating the intractability & human element brought out by the 2nd one – will be staying tuned for the 3rd viz.
For the later parts of the blog, it’d be great if each of the topic is discussed on its own with more examples!
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