Figure It Out – Stephen Anderson, Karl Fast

Author: Stephen Anderson Karl Fast Type: #book

Reference: Anderson, Fast (2020). Figure It Out: Getting From Information To Understanding

• The book is about learning how people make sense of things. The main question this book answers is: How do we enable us and others understand/make sense of confusing information?

• Understanding doesn't happen only in the brain but also in the body and environment (Understanding is the function of brain, body and environment)

• Understanding happens through 3 key components:

  • associations
  • visual representations
  • interactions (with information)

• Actively working with information is necessary to create understanding. Just having access to the information is not enough.

• Understanding requires more work than passive consumption of information

• Our bodies modify and transform our preceptions.

• We think by doing. Interaction is part of thinking

• Physical actions influence our ability to understand information.

Caution about using metaphors and analogies

Associations can lead us to better understand something unknown but they can also lead us astray. Nothing has one perfect metaphor or analogy. Different metaphors trigger different associations. Some help us understand, others might lead to false assumptions and incorrect reasoning. In those cases, we can react by several things:

• Use first principles thinking.

Visual properties (ch. 7)

• Some visual properties are better suited to represent generic information (e.g. color intensity or size/area for getting a general sense of something) than precise, quantitative information (e.g. length or spatial position for precisely comparing information)
• Be mindful of what visual element you use based on what exactly you need to communicate.
  • See Preattentive visual property for more
• For showing sequence, these properties can be useful: Scale (size), Color intensity, line thickness and orientation.
• Be mindful of the scalability of the used property: e.g. it's difficult to discern between 10 line widths vs. just 3; or between similar colors.
• Visual encodings can be used to represent: quant or qual information, sequence, or categories.

Color (ch. 8)

• Color perception is universal, rooted in our biology. Color associations are learned and shaped by culture. The understanding of color is subjective and differs across cultures. This can also change over time (e.g. pink vs. blue for boys vs. girls before and after WWII)
• However, there is some universal pattern in understanding colors across cultures:
  • Dark/light -> Red -> Yellow/green -> Blue (very roughly described)
• Therefore, it's best to pair colors with other visual encodings/properties to convey meaning. We shouldn't rely on colors only.

Using space to aid understanding (ch. 9)

• People naturally use space to communicate meaning: using objects to represent abstract concepts/entities and arranging them to represent relationships or processes.

  • This applies especially for complex things where word description doesn't suffice.
  • We naturally extend our cognition into the environment around.

• People associate spatial concepts with meaning (e.g. good/valuable is up etc.)

  • Some associations are embodied (rooted in our biology, how we interact with the world through our bodies)
  • Other associations are cultural (e.g. meaning of left-to-right order in West vs. RTL in Arab culture)

• Circular arrangements represent continuous, repetitive cycles with no fundamental changes (e.g. clock representing time)

• We better (more easily and reliably) estimate lengths than areas or volumes.

• By using space to hold information (off-loading info to it), we reduce our individual cost of understanding (by having to rely less on memory).

• There's a universal pattern behind all visual models: Objects Placed into Territories

  • Those are three categories of visual elements and properties that allow us to communicate information via visual representations.

Chapter 10:

• Interacting is thinking. Not just the result of it. That's what the idea of Embodied cognition is about.