Information Graphics and Intuition: Heuristics as a Techne for Visualization

Professional communication scholars have critiqued the idea that visual styles derived from cognitive theories of human perception can be universally understood by all people and thus effective in all rhetorical situations. Cognitive heuristics, or mental shortcuts that influence how individuals make decisions, provide a framework for reconciling the perceptual features of visualizations with the cultural and contextual features of particular rhetorical situations. This article analyzes information graphics using the heuristics of representativeness, availability, and affect, applying this analysis to a techne of visual design that accounts for both intuitive and contextual reasoning.