ChartCheck

Supporting the creation of a community-based online resource to combat misinformation while improving data literacy.

In the winter of 2018, OCAD University's Isabel Meirelles participated in an expert panel of eight reviewers and contributors to ChartCheck, a proof-of-concept project by Periscopic, supported in part by a grant from the Knight Foundation. ChartCheck aims to serve as a trusted and impartial online resource that evaluates the validity of charts, graphs and other data representations, while encouraging data literacy. The expert panel helped with devising a comprehensive set of assessment criteria as well as evaluating a selection of data presentations based on three main categories: Data quality, data analysis, and presentation. Periscopic plans to launch ChartCheck by October 1st, 2018 so as to respond to data presentations used to influence the US midterm elections.

Click here to learn more about ChartCheck.

 

Isabel Meirelles is a designer and educator whose intellectual curiosity lies in the relationships between visual thinking and visual representation. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Design and a researcher in the Visual Analytics Lab at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. In addition to collaborating with scientists and humanists in the development of visualization systems, Isabel’s research focuses on the examination of the fundamentals underlying how information is structured, represented and communicated in different media. Current research interests include extending graphical literacy to scientific disciplines, especially in the process of externalizing knowledge and communicating findings. Meirelles is the author of “Design for Information: An introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices behind effective information visualizations” (Rockport, 2013).

Sponsor(s): 
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 11:00am

Graphical Style Guide for Scientific Communication

A style guide as a pedagogical vehicle for clarifying design decisions as well as helping scientists with instructions for generating visualizations.

During the summer and fall 2017, Isabel Meirelles collaborated with Dr. Arturas Petronis and his scientific team at the Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory, CAMH. Isabel lead a design team that included a co-PI (Angela Norwood) and two undergraduate research assistants in a two-phase project. In the first phase, the design team stylized and refined a set of charts for reproduction in an article published on Nature Communications 9: 644 (2018) - click here to read.  

The work was conducted based on data visualization best practices, general principles of graphic design and visual perception. In the second phase, the design team devised a graphical style guide specifying systems and conventions for continuous use by the scientific research team. While the main goal of the guide is to provide guidance for designing effective charts, it also works as a pedagogical vehicle for clarifying design decisions. The project was presented in October 2017 at the international peer-review conference  IDXVII VisionPlus, organized by IIID—International Institute for Information Design.

 

Isabel Meirelles is a designer and educator whose intellectual curiosity lies in the relationships between visual thinking and visual representation. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Design and a researcher in the Visual Analytics Lab at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. In addition to collaborating with scientists and humanists in the development of visualization systems, Isabel’s research focuses on the examination of the fundamentals underlying how information is structured, represented and communicated in different media. Current research interests include extending graphical literacy to scientific disciplines, especially in the process of externalizing knowledge and communicating findings. Meirelles is the author of “Design for Information: An introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices behind effective information visualizations” (Rockport, 2013).

Sponsor(s): 
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 10:45am