As a visualization scientist, you always fight the battle between pretty and useful, fun and effective.  While the two aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s half art and half science finding the balance.  Kim Hart at the Washington Post describes the problem, which was recently debated at the annual symposium of the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

The problem is figuring out how to organize and display the data in a useful and informative way, instead of forcing people to sift through heaps of mind-numbing spreadsheets. When are bar graphs and pie charts enough to break down a set of numbers? What is the best way to display flu outbreaks, cellphone call logs or senators’ voting records?

via Kim Hart – Kim Hart’s Download – washingtonpost.com.