Born in Netherlands, graduated in Medicine (writing a paper about visual representation in the studies of Medicine), Yuri Engelhardt in 1994 takes a master in “Information design and interface design”, at the department of Cognitive Psychology, University of Amsterdam.

In 1994-1998 he is Ph.D. student in “Representation and Visualization” at University of Amsterdam, studying semiotics, visual representations in daily life, metaphor, cartography, multimodal hypermedia, navigational structures and basic syntactic and semantic principles of visual representations. In 1995 he is founder and moderator of the Internet-based international ‘InfoDesign’ forum (currently about 2 500 subscribers worldwide).

He works as advisor, teacher and writes many publications upon Information Design and Visual Representation.

Since 1999 at present, Yuri is Editorial Board’s member of the international periodical “Information Design Journal”.

In 2002 he gets his Ph.D. thesis in Computer Science, titled ‘The Language of Graphics’, a framework for the analysis of syntax and meaning in maps, charts and diagrams, at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam.

Currently he is developing a digital course in “Information Visualization” at the Open

• Introduction to information visualization, and distinctions between related fields Famous people in information visualization, and their work: Charles Minard, Henry Beck, Jacques Bertin, Edward Tufte, Richard Saul Wurman. Names of fields: information visualization, information design, information architecture. Share and discuss the definitions of these fields, and the relationships between them. Our perspective on these fields and their relations, our definitions.
• History of information visualization Graphic representations are older than writing. Role of spatial metaphors in human cognition. Examples of types of visualizations: maps, time lines, quantitative graphics. Share your historical findings. Discussion: How old is the field of information visualization?
• From data to understanding Presentation of the process that goes from data to understanding in the form of an over schema that presents the different stages of the process and the links between their parts. Share your thoughts and suggestions concerning the diagram.
• Data, from data to information Data collection, information retrieval, data mining, data transformation, metadata, data characterization. Discussion about the different methods identified and the charts found.
• Visual perception The visual system and the brain. Gestalt principles. Visual impulse. The brain as a pattern recogniser.
• Discussion about the examples. Are Gestalt principles relevant to the students work? Discussion on the effects of some.
• From information to visualization General characteristics of visual representations Distinction between: components, visual attributes and composition principles. Share your thoughts on these questions.
• Components of visual representations Textual representations are made of words. We will refer to the building blocks of visual representations as 'components'. Share your suggestions for classifying components.
• Types of ‘stand-for’ relationships 'Stand-for' relationship: the relationship between what is shown and what is meant. Possibilities: prototypical example, metaphor, physical involvement, arbitrary convention. Share the examples you have found.
• Visual attributes Bertin's list: position, size, brightness, texture, color, orientation, shape. Share your answers to these questions.