… Along with the glitter and popularity, visualization has attracted something else: popular criticism. It’s happening at a small scale; we don’t yet see infographics reviews in the New York Times Arts section. Nonetheless, when a striking visualization comes out, it’s not unusual to see commentary and controversy on the web, moving from blogs to Twitter to Facebook. That level of critique comes with the territory for any popular medium of communication, and shouldn’t be a surprise.
But the process of giving and even receiving visualization criticism does turn out to hold surprises. It’s not just that visualization is so new, or that criticism can stir up emotions in any medium. As we’ll discuss, the fact that visualizations are based on transforming raw data means that criticism can take forms that would be impossible for a movie or book. Our goal in this essay is to think through the issues involved in public visualization criticism, especially criticism based on direct redesigns.