DATAPLAY: Mapping Game Mechanics to Traditional Data Visualization

Colleen Macklin Parsons The New School for Design 2 W. 13 th St., New York, NY [email protected] Michael Edwards Parsons The New School for Design 2 W. 13 th St., New York, NY [email protected] Julia Wargaski Parsons The New School for Design 2 W. 13 th St., New York, NY [email protected] Kan Yang Li Parsons The New School for Design 2 W. 13 th St., New York, NY [email protected] ABSTRACT In William Playfair's 1786 book, The Commercial and Political Atlas, he states that information, “imperfectly acquired, is generally as imperfectly retained.” [6] Playfair is commenting on the failure of tables to represent comparative data in way that was useful to the reader. Since Playfair, many different forms of media have arisen beyond ink and paper. Yet printed charts (or their digital representations) remain, by far, the most commonly used tools of data visualization. Their evolution over many centuries has allowed them to achieve a degree of sophistication that time-based and interactive representations have yet to achieve.