“Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans.”
Matt Woolman Digital Information Graphics

This quote was taken straight out of a great website that encourages the study of visualization in interaction design, navigation and user interface of complex networks. It was started by Manuel Lima, an interaction designer, information architect and design researcher, as a site where other designers come together and illustrate their own studies and develop a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. The site will take you to a library of links from researchers that are developing interactive visualization tools for various fields such as on line radio, social media communication and even obesity. Some are interactive while others are just images but they are interesting studies nonetheless.

Imagery and semiotics are becoming very important disciplines to research because web and mobile technology are using these concepts to better perfect communication performance. Instead of texts we use symbols, when was the last time you typed out smiling instead of just : ) it’s time consuming and inefficient. I’m a visual type of a person, I understand things better if it is visualized rather than reading text and I’m sure others are the same way. I took a look of some these visualization models and I think they are both innovative, functional and actually quite artistic. I posted some samples below that will take you to their original links, these are basic interactivity but you’ll get the gist of the idea. I really encourage you to check these out, you may be inspired to design a visual navigation model of your own.

Related articles

• Talking Interactive Web Design with Michael Hamm (sessions.edu)
• Visual Complexity: a review of Manuel Lima’s new book (perceptualedge.com)
• An UX designer is NOT (necessarily) a programmer (anilts8.wordpress.com)
• Video: Interactively Visualizing Science at Scale at SC11 (insidehpc.com)
• Francesco Franchi on Visual Storytelling and Representation vs. Interpretation (brainpickings.org)
• How user personas will help your website user experience (marketing.yell.com)
• Design Language for Interactions (slideshare.net)
• Data Visualization- The Medium is the Message (bi24.co.uk)