What makes a visualization memorable?
Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 7, 2026

Using Generative Art to Convey Past and Future Climate Transitions
Published on: March 31, 2023
Michelle A Borkin1, Azalea A Vo, Zoya Bylinskii
1Harvard University.
Abstract:
An ongoing debate in the Visualization community concerns the role that visualization types play in data understanding. In human cognition, understanding and memorability are intertwined. As a first step towards being able to ask questions about impact and effectiveness, here we ask: 'What makes a visualization memorable?' We ran the largest scale visualization study to date using 2,070 single-panel visualizations, categorized with visualization type (e.g., bar chart, line graph, etc.), collected from news media sites, government reports, scientific journals, and infographic sources. Each visualization was annotated with additional attributes, including ratings for data-ink ratios and visual densities. Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk, we collected memorability scores for hundreds of these visualizations, and discovered that observers are consistent in which visualizations they find memorable and forgettable. We find intuitive results (e.g., attributes like color and the inclusion of a human recognizable object enhance memorability) and less intuitive results (e.g., common graphs are less memorable than unique visualization types). Altogether our findings suggest that quantifying memorability is a general metric of the utility of information, an essential step towards determining how to design effective visualizations.
Related Concept Videos
Flashbulb Memory
Visual System
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...
Mnemonic Devices
Acronyms
Acronyms are created by using the initial letters of a series of words to form a new word or phrase. This approach condenses complex information into a single, memorable entity. For example,...
Traumatic Memory
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

