I didn't quite catch that
Jason Kottke linked to a message from Donald Norman that says, in part:
I am surprised he likes the Napoleon map so much because it has, in his terms, superfluous chart chunk - those drawings of soldiers.
To which I can only rejoin: huh? What drawings of soldiers? The map in question (lo-res version here) doesn't depict any soldiers, only the movements thereof. Norman also writes:
Sometimes chart junk (his term) helps in the understanding of a chart by providing mnemonic aid to the symbols.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Maybe I've been taken in by the preaching, but I agree with Tufte completely: chart junk is the opposite of data. Tufte doesn't claim that charts shouldn't be explained, he claims that charts should be honest and not obscure their data. Chart junk is, by definition, ink that conveys no data. Explanatory text is secondary data, not chart junk.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that Tufte can get overly preachy. But Norman's message completely misses the point.
Posted by ned at April 13, 2003 04:09 PM