Guidelines for designing information charts often state that the presentation should reduce 'chart junk' -visual embellishments that are not essential to understanding the data. In contrast, some popular chart designers wrap the presented data in detailed and elaborate imagery, raising the questions of whether this imagery is really as detrimental to understanding as has been proposed, and whether the visual embellishment may have other benefits. To investigate these issues, we conducted an experiment that compared embellished charts with plain ones, and measured both interpretation accuracy and long-term recall. We found that people's accuracy in describing the embellished charts was no worse than for plain charts, and that their recall after a two-to-three-week gap was significantly better. Although we are cautious about recommending that all charts be produced in this style, our results question some of the premises of the minimalist approach to chart design.

Previous studies examining perceptual biases in art have revealed that paintings tend to be lit from above and to the left. Abstract images provide a way of testing for the left-light bias while controlling for cues such as posing biases, ground line, shadows, and reflections. A total of 42 participants completed a task that required moving a "virtual flashlight" across the surface of abstract images presented on a computer screen: 20 images (presented both right-side-up and upside down) were used in the study. The participant's only instruction was to "light the painting in a way that is most aesthetically pleasing to you". As predicted, participants on average focused the "virtual flashlight" in the top left quadrant. This study reveals that lateral lighting biases in artwork are not dependent on perception of local light source or interactions with discrete, concrete visual representations in the artwork.

In this paper, we describe a cumulative context computer game, where accumulated contextual information of the players" activity levels, obtained through mobile sensors, is used to modify game state. Our implementation used a statistic-based, real-time version of the classic game of chess, where the statistics of the pieces depended on the activity of the users and the environment in which they performed the activity. Users found the game engaging and fun, and almost all of the participants altered their behaviors to enhance their performance in the game. This work provides a platform for further research into meaningful integration of cumulative context in games.