Chapter 5 Clarify Complexity (Pages 169-202)

VISUAL COMPLEXITY
Complexity can capture interest.
Too much complexity can drive a viewer away. 
Complexity is all around us and the depiction of complexity is getting around also. 
There are different; classifications of complexity, task, information, objective, etc. 
Complexity can also be subjective, dependent on person to person. 

EXPLAINING COMPLEX CONCEPTS
Visuals with a lot of elements such as those that explain a complex topic often create a scattered eye movement.
"The challenge for visual communicators is to provide a full and complete graphical explanation while accommodating the limits and strengths  of human cognitive architecture."
Clarify information but don't simplify it.
"Don't cut out so much information you cut an artery and kill the message!"

COGNITION AND COMPLEXITY
Explanations help dissolve cognitive dissonance and expand or repair our cognitive schemas. 
Big explanation put a heavy burden on working memory.
Our minds are designed to hold complex information, it is theorized that when we get complex input we build schema into networks to fit everything in. 
Coherence and context are important for building mental representations of reality.
Context is important for defining the parameters of an explanation. 

APPLYING THE PRINCIPAL
Don't leave out anything you need, but don't include too much detail that it becomes over whelming 
3 Techniques can be used.
1. Chunk complexity up into groups so it is not all absorbed  at one time.
2. Spell out the hidden or assumed elements
3. Draw the structure from the context of the information. Use the logical ordering that is involved within the process itself. ie step one in the graphic the actual first thing you do or see when engaging in the actual task.
We have to find a balance between the details of the message and limits of cognition to be successful

SEGMENTS AND SEQUENCES
Sometimes placing steps in separate images like a comic strip can avoid trying to cram them together in one complicated layout that would look otherwise disorganized and illogical.
Research says chunking makes it easier to understand an explanation as opposed to giving it all in one image.
Segmenting is how we initally begin to understand the world as children, designning graphic that follow this convention take advantage of an already natural space in our minds for understanding these things.
Segmenting slows down the time needed to comprehend the message of a visual .
Segmenting is risque because the viewer must hold the information in working memory while jumping the gap and reading the next step in the process.

SPECIALIZED VIEWS
Our vision is limited and sometimes it is necessary to show the invisible world by magnification x-raying it or other wise spelling out hidden things.
Experts know differently and not just more.
Sometime super detailed photographs are beneficial.
Sometimes removing detail can be misleading.
Interrior views are useful
Pieced out views are useful where an object is taken apart.
Zooming in