thinking visually, users must consider two questions; 1) What you have and 2) what you're doing. The first step is identifying what data you want visualised. It is data-driven like profit over the past ten years or a conceptual idea like how a specific organisation is structured. Once this question is answered one can then focus on whether they are trying to communicate information (declarative visualisation) or trying to figure something out (exploratory visualisation). Scott Berinato combines these questions to give four types of visual communication that each have their own goals. These four types of visual communication are as follows; idea illustration (conceptual & declarative). Used to teach, explain and/or simply concepts. For example, organisation charts and decision trees. idea generation (conceptual & exploratory). Used to discover, innovate and solve problems. For example, a whiteboard after a brainstorming session. visual discovery (data-driven & exploratory). Used to spot trends and make sense of data. This type of visual is more common with large and complex data where the dataset is somewhat unknown and the task is open-ended. everyday data-visualisation (data-driven & declarative). The most common and simple type of visualisation used for affirming and setting context. For example, a line graph of GDP over time. Applications Data and information visualization insights are being applied in areas such as: Scientific research Digital libraries Data mining Information graphics Financial data analysis Health care Market studies Manufacturing production control Crime mapping eGovernance and Policy Modeling Organization Notable academic and industry laboratories in the field are: Adobe Research IBM Research Google Research Microsoft Research Panopticon Software Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute Tableau Software University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab Vvi Conferences in this field, ranked by significance in data visualization research, are: IEEE Visualization: An annual international conference on scientific visualization, information visualization, and visual analytics. Conference is held in October. ACM SIGGRAPH: An annual international conference on computer graphics, convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. Conference dates vary. EuroVis: An annual Europe-wide conference on data visualization, organized by the Eurographics Working Group on Data Visualization and supported by the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (IEEE VGTC). Conference is usually held in June. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI): An annual international conference on human–computer interaction, hosted by ACM SIGCHI. Conference is usually held in April or May. Eurographics: An annual Europe-wide computer graphics conference, held by the European Association for