Visualizing Technical Information: A Cultural Critique (Baywood's Technical Communications Series)

Visualizing Technical Information: A Cultural Critique demonstrates the ways in which the leading technical visuals of information design-graphs, charts, diagrams, tables, illustrations, and information visualization-are designed and read. Using genre theory as an analytical tool, the author makes the argument that problems with these visual forms are not necessarily the result of a designer's poor decisions or a reader's poor interpretation skills. Instead, there may be inherent problems in the visual genres themselves that are a direct result of their cultural history and current use.