Saying It in Graphics: From Intentions to Visualizations

We propose a methodology for automatically realizing communicative goals in graphics. It features a task model that mediates the communicative intent and the selection of graphical techniques. The methodology supports the following functions: isolating assertions presentable in graphics; mapping such assertions into tasks for the potential reader, and selecting graphical techniques that support those tasks. We illustrate the methodology by redesigning a textual argument into a multimedia one with the same rhetorical and content structures but employing graphics to achieve some of the intentions.