Manifesto for Putting 'Chartjunk' in the Trash 2021!

TL;DR

This paper advocates for the removal of 'chartjunk' from visualization research, challenging its negative connotations and encouraging the community to reframe how visualizations are discussed and designed.

Contribution

It provides an etymology of chartjunk, critiques its current use, and demonstrates active maintenance by editing Wikipedia, removing chartjunk from papers, and creating a repository to promote re-imagination.

Findings

Wikipedia page on chartjunk edited to remove harmful connotations

Chartjunk removed from IEEE papers to promote clearer visualization language

Repository created to showcase re-imagined visualizations without chartjunk

Abstract

In this provocation we ask the visualization research community to join us in removing chartjunk from our research lexicon. We present an etymology of chartjunk, framing its provocative origins as misaligned, and harmful, to the ways the term is currently used by visualization researchers. We call on the community to dissolve chartjunk from the ways we talk about, write about, and think about the graphical devices we design and study. As a step towards this goal we contribute a performance of maintenance through a trio of acts: editing the Wikipedia page on chartjunk, cutting out chartjunk from IEEE papers, and scanning and posting a repository of the pages with chartjunk removed to invite the community to re-imagine how we describe visualizations. This contribution blurs the boundaries between research, activism, and maintenance art, and is intended to inspire the community to join us in taking out the trash.