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“A picture is worth a thousand words”, is the familiar phrase. “The human brain is more able to identify and comprehend relationships and patterns if data is encoded into visual forms” (Cleveland, 1994). The definitions of infographic are: “The use of computer-supported, interactive visual representations of data to amplify cognition” (Card, 1999); infographic is graphic visual representation of information, data or knowledge intended to clarify and integrate difficult information quickly and clearly (Newsom & Haynes, 2004; Smiciklas, 2012). Educational definition for infographic is “a collection of graphic organizers integrates different media in simple diagrams: text, images, symbols and schemas” (Serenelli et al., 2000). In Human and Computer Interaction (HCI) approach, infographics are capable of improve user cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the ability of human visual system to see patterns and trends (Heer et al., 2010; Card, 2009).
Infographic is a new method to visualize data. Another word for infographic is information visualization (InfoVis) or data visualization (Stasko, 2010). Visualization is defined as (Scaife, 1996) “mechanisms by which humans perceive, interpret, use and communicate visual information (McCormick et al., 1987) in Scaife (1996)”. The main aim of visualization (İnan & Dur, 2012) is to communicate information more clearly and effectively by using graphical means. Infographic is a brilliant approach in the business and design world currently and have become the easy technique for passing on useful information to the audiences/readers.
Actually it is not such a new concept according to Confalone said on his blog that infographics are ancient as it appeared long time ago in Egypt. Everything about the relief sculpture of the pharaoh Akhenaten and his family pictured as in Figure 1 is loaded with information: this is a 3,300-year-old infographic (Confalone, 2012). As well as the earliest humans on the planet shared information in pictures carved and painted on rocks and caves as early infographics. For the infographic design is the best way to speak to both the left and right human brain and to fully engage cognition, because the right brain can engages in the more visual work and the left brain work well in moving in sequential order. Adding pictures of brain scans and mentioning cognitive neuroscience make people more inclined to believe what they are reading (McCabe, 2008). People usually following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations (Levie & Lentz, 1982). There is the importance of information visualization which is adding in reporting the believable and trusted means context. As mentioned in the book (Golombisky et al., 2010) title “Infographics: Maximum Information in Minimum Space”, this book explains the main purpose of infographics design which is produced as supportive as they can in order to give as much detailed information as possible and it can save spaces.