Chartjunk

3 object(s)
 

Our Goal And Team

Our Goal

Our goal through this research was to reframe the conversation around chartjunk. Since the term is not well defined and we had read some articles that showed chartjunk is often useful for creating accessible charts, we decided we needed to revisit the term and see if we should even be using it at all. We decided that the best thing we can do is to throw out the term, thus completing some vis maintenance,

For us, throwing out the term took many different forms. We wrote a paper, updated the wikipedia page, and physically removed the work chartjunk from all papers in IEEE. This website holds the artifacts from that final piece of performance art: the video of the chartjunk being cut out of the papers and the scans of the copies with the word removed.

This performance art was inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside (July 23, 1973).

Click here to check out the paper.

On Oct 24, 2021, derya akbaba dramatically read Tufte’s text while the alt.vis community performed collective maintenance work. Traces of the performance include the slides and the video recording of the presentation.

Our Team

derya akbaba

In her PhD work Derya uses critical theory as a lens for understanding the intersection of design and technology within the field of Information Visualization. With a less than “traditional” background in Labor Relations, Cognitive Science, and Economics, she is inspired by the intersections across disciplines and interrogating the differences (and similarities) that matter.

Prior to joining the University of Utah she worked for six years at a boutique data analytics company developing a propriety systems theory and building up the data visualization and design teams. She graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Industrial and Labor Relations with minors in Cognitive Science and Economics.

Website Link

Miriah Meyer

Miriah is a professor in the Division of Media & Information Technology at Linköping University, supported through the WASP program. Her research focuses on the design of visualization systems for helping people make sense of complex data, and on the development of methods for helping visualization designers make sense of the world. She obtained her bachelors degree in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at LiU she was an associate professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah and a member of the Vis Design Lab in the Scientific Computing & Imaging Institute.

Miriah has received numerous awards and recognitions for her work including being named a University of Utah Distinguished Alumni, both a TED Fellow and a PopTech Science Fellow, a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow, and included on MIT Technology Review’s TR35 list of the top young innovators. She was also awarded an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship that landed her a stint as a science writer for the Chicago Tribune.

Website Link

Jack Wilburn

Jack is a data visualization software developer with the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah. Through his work, Jack leads development efforts on over $3,000,000 of grant funded research into a broad range of topics, including multivariate network visualizations, neuromodulation therapy databases, and patient blood management analysis tools. Another critical part of Jack’s work is mentoring PhD students in the Visualization Design Lab and helping the lab make quality, maintainable software. He obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics from Westminster College in Salt Lake City and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

In his prior work, Jack developed machine learning models for national banks and created custom lifetime value solutions for many US companies. Ultimately, Jack has developed and implemented tools that cover the whole data science stack, and he’s comfortable explaining the complex technical topics to stakeholders from any background.

Jack’s hobbies include:

Website Link

Main T. Nance

Main is interested in one and one thing only, maintenance. As our online avatar, you can tweet at @SayNo2Chartjunk with your own maintenance work. Let Main and us know what terms do the work to fill in the blanks that chartjunk left behind.