Good vs. Bad Visualizations

The good example of visualizations is The Huffington Post. Most stories are accompanied by pictures. The pictures they chosen usually tell a lot of the stories already. It’s very easy to navigate and these pictures with titles tell the story clearly.  This is a good example of the dual coding theory where information is presented through both an imagery/nonverbal system and a verbal system. Including graphics in text may support better retention of the information. They also have a “Quick read” option, which present the first few sentences of the story and readers can click on “Read the whole story” options if they wish to continue. I feel it’s very easy and less time-consuming to scan through the website to know what’s going on.

On the other hand, The New York Times’s website is very heavy on text even though it’s a good read. It takes longer to navigate and to scan through in order to know what’s going on of the day. Even though the website has few pictures, it’s more like icons. Frankly, they are quite small and I am not quite sure what are the messages they are trying to convey. Moreover, the fonts and colors of the texts are not very clearly distinguished. I think this website takes more working memories and cognitive loads for readers.