Visually Augmenting Documents With Data

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a famous English saying. It is true in many cases, because a complex idea or data can be simply conveyed through the use of a single static image or diagram. Therefore, inclusion of graphics and visualizations in scientific texts has been an important aspect ever since researchers started publishing articles. Conventional writing styles allow researchers to provide images, graphs, and tables to enhance the readability and understandability of the text, but usually, these large-scale images need to be placed at a slightly different location from the relevant text, either on the same page or on the next pages. This far-off placement of graphics forces readers to switch their attention between text and graphics, which can cause a split-attention effect, thereby increasing the cognitive effort to comprehend the information.