The goal of Gestalt is to tell a visual story, and it depends on:
- the datasets that we are using
- the user who we are telling the story
- the types of story that we are trying to tell
- the types of medium that we use to tell the story
To accomplish this goal, we break each of these components further into their respective parts, or what we like to call them as “schema.” For example, User Schema consists of users who have general knowledge of the data and users who have in-depth knowledge of the data. If we wanted to paint a comparison story, the story that we tell for the first set of users will be different than the story that we tell for the second set of users. We will also tell the story differently depending on the dataset that we have, the type of story that we want to tell (in this case we are telling the users a comparison story), and the type of medium that we want to use to tell the story. Piecing together all four schemas will help us build a visual story that is fitting to the user.
In short, Gestalt consists of four schemas:
- raw schema: the components that differentiate one dataset from the next
- user schema: the components that make up the different types of users
- story schema: the types of story that we are trying to tell
- ui schema: the UI components needed to tell the story on a particular medium