Riassunto analitico
Infographics and data visualization are fundamental tools of the society we live in. An infographic is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge through charts, diagrams or maps. They are part of our world since the primitive human species, with the representations of different life scenes printed in the caves’ walls, until they became the interactive visual software with unlimited possibilities that we know now.
Infographics is not just about the visual representation of data, is about finding insights and hidden knowledge behind them thanks to the use of graphics and charts that facilitate the work of our mind, of our cognitive processes, to search for patterns and possible relationships. Thanks to them is possible to summarize an entire story in one image. Do you know the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words”? Well, it pretty good encloses the meaning of what infographics do.
The understanding of our mind’s mechanisms allows us to create better visualizations, and from better visualizations is possible to catch better conclusions.
In a world where an almost infinite amount of data is created and exchanged everyday without stops, the ability to represent these data in a clear and comprehensible manner is also a source of competitive advantage for companies in every kind of sector. Often the problem is the complexity of the information we are analyzing, and the role of data visualization is indeed to clarify them. Can be the thought of many that infographics are more related to media and magazines, but evidence has shown that their possibilities and benefits are extendible to many fields. Is not a novelty that scientists and mathematics use a lot of diverse graphical representations in order to show mechanisms and systems.
In this paper I will try to illustrate the inner workings of our mind, in particular the ones that consent us to better understand data and information through the use of images, graphs and charts and what principles we should follow in creating them according to their scope and to their final user.
Finally, I will investigate how infographics have possibly played an important role in the actual global crisis due to the pandemic of Covid19, both through the best sites on the web and through an original dedicated survey, which will uncover some opinion among the population.
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