Chapter 4: Focus your audience’s attention

Question 1

What is preattentive attributes and Why do we use it in our visualization?

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Answer 1

Pre-attentive attributes are information we can process visually almost immediately, before sending the information to the attention processing parts of our brain. (External)
First, preattentive attributes can be
leveraged to help direct your audience’s attention to where you want them to focus it. ( (1) drawing your audience’s attention quickly to where you want them to look.)
Second, they can be used to create a visual hierarchy of elements to lead your audience through the information you want to communicate in the way you want them to process it. ((2) creating a visual hierarchy of information.)

Question 2

Why don’t we want to We don’t want to make our audience work to get at the information?

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Answer 2

because in doing so, we run the risk of
losing their attention. With that, we lose our ability to communicate.

Question 3

Iconic memory is tuned to preattentive attributes. True/False

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Answer 3

True

Question 4

if we use preattentive attributes strategically, they can help us enable our
audience to do what?

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Answer 4

see what we want them to see before they even know they’re seeing it!

Question 5

What are some examples of preattentive attributes?

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Answer 5

Difference in shape, hue, length, enclosure. one thing with a different preattentive attribute among others, catches our eyes before we even know it.

Question 6

One thing to be aware of is that people tend to associate quantitative values with some (but not all) of the preattentive attributes. give an example.

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Answer 6

For example, most people will consider a long line to represent a greater value than a short line.

Question 7

In live presentation settings, repeated iterations of the same visual, with different pieces emphasized to tell different stories or different aspects of the same story can be an effective strategy. True/False

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Answer 7

True

Question 8

Why is the use of preattentive attributes not recommended when doing exploratory analysis and recommended for expalantory analysis?

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Answer 8

When you’re doing exploratory analysis, by highlighting one point in your story using preattentive attributes, it can actually make other points harder to see. so , you should mostly avoid the use of preattentive attributes here.

When it comes to explanatory analysis, however, you should have a specific story you are communicating to your audience. Leverage preattentive attributes to help make that story visually clear.

Question 9

What are the 3 most important preattentive attributes?

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Answer 9

size, color,
and position on page.

For color to be effective, it must be used sparingly. Too much variety prevents anything from standing out.

Question 10

Does it make sense to change up the colors or graph types so the
audience doesn’t get bored?

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Answer 10

My answer is a resounding No! The story you are telling should be what keeps your audience’s attention not the design elements of your graphs. When it comes to the type of graph, you should always use whatever will be easiest for your audience to read.

A change in colors signals just that—a change. So leverage this when you want your audience to feel change for some reason, but never simply for the sake of novelty.

Question 11

When I’m designing a visual and selecting colors to highlight both positive and negative aspects, I frequently use blue to signal positive and orange for negative. why?

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Answer 11

For color blind people, usually they can’t tell the difference between red and green