Author of the article here. Great points, thanks for reading and commenting.
I think that data journalism is a great example of that "put it in someone's brain" idea.
I also think there are all kinds of places we're seeing more novel approaches in too: data art, physical data viz (e.g. museum exhibits), visualizing huge datasets, etc. The Climate Stripes project, maybe the most famous data viz of the last couple decades, was made by a climate scientist.
But I definitely agree that this "more experimental than rigid" side of data viz doesn't capture the majority of the field, nor should it!
I think that data journalism is a great example of that "put it in someone's brain" idea.
I also think there are all kinds of places we're seeing more novel approaches in too: data art, physical data viz (e.g. museum exhibits), visualizing huge datasets, etc. The Climate Stripes project, maybe the most famous data viz of the last couple decades, was made by a climate scientist.
But I definitely agree that this "more experimental than rigid" side of data viz doesn't capture the majority of the field, nor should it!