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Have you ever noticed that when looking at representations of data, such as graphs or charts, your eyes seem drawn to certain parts of the image? For example, in the image above, maybe you first notice the leftward cluster of tall bars on the top two graphs. These properties that we are naturally drawn to notice without conscious effort are called preattentive attributes of visual perception.

Preattentive attributes are hard-wired within our visual systems, and apply to just about everything that we can visually perceive. For the purposes of this article though, we’ll focus on how this concept of preattentive visual properties can be applied to data visualizations in order to more effectively communicate what we want our data to show.

In his book “Information Visualization: Perception for Design”, Colin Ware outlines the four categories of preattentive visual attributes: form, color, position, and motion. Let’s go through each one in more detail.

The category of form generally encompasses the shape and dimensions of how your data is represented, both on their own and relative to the rest of the data in your visualization.

The attributes of form include line length, line width, orientation, size, shape, curvature, enclosure, and blur.

Have you ever noticed that when looking at representations of data, such as graphs or charts, your eyes seem drawn to certain parts of the image? For example, in the image above, maybe you first notice the leftward cluster of tall bars on the top two graphs. These properties that we are naturally drawn to notice without conscious effort are called preattentive attributes of visual perception.

Preattentive attributes are hard-wired within our visual systems, and apply to just about everything that we can visually perceive. For the purposes of this article though, we’ll focus on how this concept of preattentive visual properties can be applied to data visualizations in order to more effectively communicate what we want our data to show.

In his book “Information Visualization: Perception for Design”, Colin Ware outlines the four categories of preattentive visual attributes: form, color, position, a