What Does “Visual Data” Look Like

The Data You Don’t Read but Still Believe In

We asked 50 emerging designers to rate what looks like visual data and what doesn’t. The findings challenged our assumptions and revealed that structure, not style, drives visual trust.

The Form That Informs

At Constellations, we help people make sense of the visual world by using perception testing to inform more intuitive, effective design decisions. Our platform reveals how visuals are interpreted, enabling teams to move forward with greater clarity, confidence, and impact. But meaningful perception testing begins with a shared vocabulary.

One term we encounter often, yet find rarely defined, is visual data.

It’s frequently confused with data visualization, but the two are not the same. Data visualization transforms datasets into charts, graphs, or infographics to support interpretation. Visual data, by contrast, is information embedded directly in visual form. It is structured, styled, and labeled in ways that make meaning instantly perceptible. It’s not decoration; it’s legibility through form.

Because we work at the intersection of visuals and understanding, we launched our first study on the Constellations platform to explore this very question:

What does visual data actually mean to people? What associations come up? What patterns emerge? Where is there alignment, and where is there ambiguity?

Below is an overview and summary of our findings.

Watch a deep analysis with our founder below

Previous Studies and Results

The Legend Zelda Movie and What Fans Want to See

We tested six dimensions of the film’s visual direction using Constellations, from character design to villain treatment to overall style, spanning every era of the franchise. Despite Breath of the Wild being the bestselling Zelda game by a wide margin, its characters, enemies, and aesthetics consistently split the audience. What participants converged on was Ocarina of Time…

When Client’s Say “Make It Pop”

Every designer has heard it: “Can you make it pop?” It’s one of the most common pieces of creative feedback, and one of the hardest to act on, because it points to a feeling more than a specific fix. So we decided to find out what “pop” actually means. Using Constellations, we asked creative professionals to sort images by which ones pop and which ones don’t—and the results were surprisingly consistent.

When We Look at Robots, What Are We Really Seeing?

When We Look at Robots, What Are We Really Seeing? Understanding the Tools-Versus-Beings Divide in Robot Perception What makes a robot seem helpful versus creepy? Using our platform Constellations, designed to capture perception through visual interaction, we asked...

Will the Most Authentic Santa Please Stand Up

The images people embraced all shared one thing: they caught Santa in the middle of doing something. Reading his list by candlelight. Kneeling to feed a reindeer in falling snow. The images they rejected? Cute graphics, staged photos, and counterintuitively, some of the most beautifully rendered Santas in the set.

Everyone’s Favorite Halloween Candy

Perception Map Test: What Is Your Favorite Halloween Candy? This test asked participants a deceptively simple question: What is your favorite Halloween candy? Behind the wrappers, though, the answers revealed powerful emotional codes. From generational classics to...

Spooky Or Scary?

Is it "Spooky" or "Scary"? A visual study of how people separate spooky from scary — and what that says about our modern relationship with fear. Halloween sits at the strange crossroads of delight and dread. Every October, our visual culture fills with ghosts,...

What does “American” Look Like?

For July 4th, we explored what “American” looks like in 2025—revealing shared civic values through visual perception mapping.

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