How Humans See Data by John Rauser.
Apologies to John for stepping on his title but at time mark 3:26, he says:
Good visualizations optimize for the human visual system.
That one insight sets a basis for distinguishing between good visualizations and bad ones.
Do watch the rest of the video, it is all as good as that moment.
What’s your favorite moment?
From the description:
John Rauser explains a few of the most important results from research into the functioning of the human visual system and the question of how humans decode information presented in graphical form. By understanding and applying this research when designing statistical graphics, you can simplify difficult analytical tasks as much as possible.
Links:
R/GGplot2 code for all plots in presentation.
Slides for Good visualizations optimize for the human visual system
Graphical Perception and Graphical Methods for Analyzing Scientific Data by William S. Cleveland and Robert McGill. (cited in the presentation)
The Elements of Graphing Data by William S. Cleveland. (also cited in the presentation)