5 ms·

Designing the avocado of uncertainty visualization

90 points by skadamat 2y ago

verticalscaler 2y ago
Alright, well that was disappointing. No whimsical fruit to be found anywhere on that page. My imagination went wild for a moment. I don't know what exactly I was expecting but I'm pretty broken up about it. :/
Tao3300 2y ago
In ancient times, they would have called that a shmoo of uncertainty, while avocado was the color your telephone and refrigerator happened to be.
- ricksunny 2y ago
  That was the color of our countertops (formica) and oven door as well.
  - mhuffman 2y ago
    That was the color of our family station wagon :-(
pimlottc 2y ago
I get that unexpected and quirky titles drive clicks, but please, authors, give at lease some basic explanation in the beginning of your article. I shouldn't have to scroll almost halfway down the page to find out what "avocado of uncertainty" means.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
  It was pretty clear what it was going to be after the first sentence. Maybe run it by ChatGPT next time in lieu of reading or scrolling, it was able to figure it out when I asked just now.
sublinear 2y ago
Article says this... > Forcing a user to relearn a system that may not be broken is poor design, so we wanted to maintain as much of these design characteristics as possible. ...which seems to conflict with this statement later in the article. > As CrisisReady explained to us, people expect to see the cone of uncertainty in hurricane visualizations, though the avocado of uncertainty should remain the focus.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- csours 2y ago
  They don't do a great job of highlighting the final output, but they use both.
levocardia 2y ago
From a color palette decision, isn't green a bad choice? "I'm in the green, ok perfect I'll stay at home!" Why not use a perceptually uniform color gradation that has a vague connotation of danger, like the (aptly named) plasma, inferno, or magma color schemes from R's viridis color package? [1]. [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/intro-to-viridis.html https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/in...
- ziddoap 2y ago
  From the images further in the article, it looks like CrisisReady uses a standard color palette. The green color used in the banner image and the side-by-side image seem to be for emphasizing how the shape looks similar to an avocado, not for use in the actual reports.
gumby 2y ago
> When we loaded the data onto our prototype we realized it looked like an avocado; the avocado of uncertainty! Given the name of the company is "Stamen" they clearly have a masculine fruit bias.

90 points by skadamat 2y ago

Alright, well that was disappointing. No whimsical fruit to be found anywhere on that page. My imagination went wild for a moment. I don't know what exactly I was expecting but I'm pretty broken up about it. :/

Tao3300 2y ago

In ancient times, they would have called that a shmoo of uncertainty, while avocado was the color your telephone and refrigerator happened to be.

ricksunny 2y ago
That was the color of our countertops (formica) and oven door as well.
- mhuffman 2y ago
  That was the color of our family station wagon :-(

pimlottc 2y ago

I get that unexpected and quirky titles drive clicks, but please, authors, give at lease some basic explanation in the beginning of your article. I shouldn't have to scroll almost halfway down the page to find out what "avocado of uncertainty" means.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
It was pretty clear what it was going to be after the first sentence. Maybe run it by ChatGPT next time in lieu of reading or scrolling, it was able to figure it out when I asked just now.

sublinear 2y ago

Article says this... > Forcing a user to relearn a system that may not be broken is poor design, so we wanted to maintain as much of these design characteristics as possible. ...which seems to conflict with this statement later in the article. > As CrisisReady explained to us, people expect to see the cone of uncertainty in hurricane visualizations, though the avocado of uncertainty should remain the focus.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
csours 2y ago
They don't do a great job of highlighting the final output, but they use both.

levocardia 2y ago

From a color palette decision, isn't green a bad choice? "I'm in the green, ok perfect I'll stay at home!" Why not use a perceptually uniform color gradation that has a vague connotation of danger, like the (aptly named) plasma, inferno, or magma color schemes from R's viridis color package? [1]. [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/intro-to-viridis.html https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/in...

ziddoap 2y ago
From the images further in the article, it looks like CrisisReady uses a standard color palette. The green color used in the banner image and the side-by-side image seem to be for emphasizing how the shape looks similar to an avocado, not for use in the actual reports.

gumby 2y ago

> When we loaded the data onto our prototype we realized it looked like an avocado; the avocado of uncertainty! Given the name of the company is "Stamen" they clearly have a masculine fruit bias.