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Archive for the ‘information design’ Category

Jan 26th, 2010 by Dona Wong

Learning the ABCs of graphics

Remember how we learned to write, starting with A, B, C?

We were taught to form words and sentences before writing papers and essays. Yet with graphics, professionals in every industry received little or no training, which has left them scrambling to effectively express themselves in the language of graphics.

Most people try to use charts and graphics to enliven a critical presentation or a high profile report. The irony is that we often let the software do the thinking for us. We don’t expect a word processor to choose our vocabulary or prose style. But we expect a graphics program to choose our chart style, color and practically every element of the graphic.

And we blame the software when it falls short.

Following a few basic rules will make the difference between an effective chart that engages your audience and an inadequate chart that masks your intended message.

Take the pictogram below for example.

ABC's of Graphics

People take in charts in their totality, not vertically or horizontally. Therefore graphics must engage first and inform second. If a chart is not clear and direct, your audience has to make a lot of effort to understand the information presented. They become distracted, don’t hear your intended message and move on.

Every graphic is an opportunity to communicate and influence your decision maker. Why leave such an important task to the software default settings?

To view more of the Dos and Don’ts of presenting data, facts and figures, click here.

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tags: information design

Dec 29th, 2009 by Fred Burt

As good as your word in 2010

Language has become slippery, tricky, legally grey, politically charged, deliberately unclear.

Which is exactly why the word, written and spoken, is a huge opportunity for brands. The world is crying out for clarity in language. No hiding, no wiggle room, no deliberate grey. Black and white, please.

2010 has to be the year when businesses, private and public, big and small, look to re-establish trust. Clarity will be key, and the word will be the means to deliver this clarity.

But being clear is not easy. It requires discipline, hard work and, in case we forget, a proposition that really motivates your audience.

We will be working for many utilities, financial service providers, telecoms and public sector clients this year. Our primary task will be to make their statements, websites, bills, and other information-rich interfaces more effective.

But actually, we’ll be giving them the ultimate proof point that they mean it when they say to their customers they are going to be more open. That they’re as good as their word.

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tags: brand, clarity, information design, simplicity, simplification

Dec 15th, 2009 by Dona Wong

“Great presentation. You are a rock star!”

That’s what you want to hear after you step down from the podium.

Getting to that point can be painful for many professionals though. Most people create presentations by trial and error, often co-mingling clear and concise copy with complex graphics that yield no benefit to the audience. As in creating any communications piece, attention to clear mechanics, simple style and artistry is key to designing good information graphics. Yet 99 percent of presenters make charts and graphics on the fly, right before show time.

As a result, many presenters lose their audiences in slide after slide of complex charts and graphs that muddy the message they’re trying to deliver.

Working at Siegel+Gale, a brand consultancy and pioneer in simplified communications, I’ve combined my training in information design with simplified communications techniques to help an array of audiences communicate their messages clearly. Whether it’s reporting financial information, creating a client presentation, interactive communication, or customer document, understanding how to design information graphics that complement the message is key to business success.

In my new book, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, I begin with the basics – the data content – that drives all graphics. You will learn to make the right choices about filtering and displaying your data. For example, plotting a stock index in actual values versus plotting the percentage change will yield two different pictures. By charting the same data in a different framework, you provide a new reference point for your audience. When you supply the reference point, you control the message.

The book goes on to cover how to use colors to your advantage, how to manage costs and resources through the use of graphics, and many other practical applications through numerous dos and don’ts.

The great feedback that I’ve gotten from reviewers shows that graphics sensibility is an essential ingredient of effective business communications today. After reading the examples from the book, you will never look at any communications piece the same way.

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tags: clarity, complexity, design, information design

Oct 29th, 2009 by Dona Wong

Computer technology has helped well-meaning professionals produce reams of bad charts

By Dona Wong
Strategy Director, Simplification

In today’s data-driven world, we are constantly bombarded by graphics—charts, maps, stock indexes, and PowerPoint presentations—that try to convey valuable information. Whether we are in business, marketing, medicine, or law, we need to know how to read and interpret this onslaught of graphics, as well as how to express ourselves in the language of graphics eloquently and effectively.

Today, project plans, budget illustrations, and progress reports are vital tools we use to communicate across the board and persuade decision makers. And with computer technology, anyone can create graphics. However, technology doesn’t stop us from making bad graphics. It can’t answer such essential questions as:

+ What material is worth putting into a chart?
+ What kind of chart should we use to present the data?
+ How can we organize the data and optimize the medium to convey our message best?

Examples of confusing, misleading, and ineffective graphics are everywhere, which doesn’t surprise me. Unlike, say, grammar, the subject of information graphics isn’t taught in schools, nor is it the focus of on-the-job-training, leaving professionals in every industry scrambling to express themselves graphically. It is painfully obvious. I have made it my business to note good and bad graphics in publications, annual reports, presentations and even street signage.

Generally bad charts fall into two categories. This first category consists of charts that don’t even have the basics down, and for example use the wrong scale, an invalid data set, or a bad color scheme. This is somewhat expected since the majority of charts in presentations are done by professionals who are not information designers. The other category of bad charts is the elaborate, highly designed graphics that turn out incomprehensible and esoteric. These are the worst offenders because these graphics are just a self-indulgent exercise by “professional” information designers. They have no value to the reader. They completely miss the main objective of graphics, which is to communicate a message.

Content is what ultimately makes graphics interesting. When a graphical piece of information is done right, you can’t tell that there is “design” behind it. When you strike an equilibrium between substance and design in a graphic, information just flows to the viewer in the clearest and most efficient way.

At the Center for Plain Language Symposium in Washington D.C. on October 30, I’ll be introducing these concepts to a group of business and government professionals with an interest in simplified communications.

The bottom line is, once you connect with your audience, you can start to have influence!

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tags: information design, simplification

Sep 8th, 2009 by Irene Etzkorn

$25 billion? Use Short Form; $100,000? Use Long Form

Little did I expect to find a nugget of simplification in an article about Henry Paulson and the distribution of TARP money, but that is exactly what I found in the October 2009 issue of Vanity Fair. It seems that while homeowners were asked to read and sign dozens of pages of legalese to get measly home mortgages, the CEOs of the nation’s major banks signed a lightly populated two-page commitment to borrow billions. Consisting of four clear, concise bullet points, the “Application for TARP Capital Purchase Program” demonstrates that the need to get something done is best achieved through brevity and clarity. There was no time for the banks to take the application away for legal review and wordsmithing—four clear, one-sentence bullet points stated the commitment each bank was making.

If billions can be borrowed on a short form, can simplified applications for car loans, mortgages, and student loans be far behind? Will the CEOs of these banks consider the time, money, and effort they would save if they adopted this approach in their day-to-day transactions? Why, that would be an economic stimulus in its own right.

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tags: clarity, complexity, information design, simplification

Feb 26th, 2007 by Irene Etzkorn

Gratuitous graphics must go

preaching politics

As an advocate of the power of information graphics, it pains me to complain about their use but there are times when a graphic is superfluous and even confusing. A perfect example is the graphic that accompanied the article titled, “Narrowing the Religion Gap?” in the magazine section of The New York Times on Sunday, February 18, 2007. The graphic was intended to convey the percentage of American churchgoers whose clergy members spoke out about social and moral issues such as the death penalty, stem-cell research, abortion and immigration. However, the wheel-shaped graphic with radiating spokes of differing lengths and a numbered legend for the nine issues was confusing. It did not work as well as a simple table would have.

A table could have included just two columns consisting of the topics and the percentages arranged in descending order. The meaning would have been clear and more readily accessible. The moral of the story is make sure that the graphic conveys the information either more quickly, more readily or with more impact than text alone.

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tags: clarity, complexity, information design

Feb 5th, 2007 by Irene Etzkorn

Don’t Entangle Health Literacy with General Literacy

Jane Brody wrote an article in the January 30, 2007 issue of The New York Times discussing the topic of health literacy. Although she mentions that “health illiteracy” is pervasive because it affects many strata of our society, the misinterpretations she cites will not be rectified by plain language and point to a more fundamental problem. One example—“Medication Should Be Taken With Plenty of Water”—was misinterpreted to mean “Don’t take when wet” and “Don’t drink hot water.” These misinterpretations point to general illiteracy, not health illiteracy. Unfortunately, I suspect that the people who were confused by such simple instructions are barely able to function in any aspect of their lives. They must require assistance to travel, to drive, to work, to dine out, etc.

My concern is that by muddying the issues of general illiteracy and health illiteracy, the medical community will find that solutions are unattainable and give up too easily. If we set a standard of communication for health topics that aims too low, many projects will never make it to the marketplace because the standard will be unrealistic. If someone can’t understand the words, “plenty of water,” it is absurd to think that they will ever understand a written explanation of “a 3% chance of death or serious injury from surgery.” However, many literate, well-educated people cannot understand medical consent forms and would benefit from plain language explanations and innovative information design techniques. The two topics—general illiteracy and health illiteracy—need to be disentangled because the solutions are not the same.

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tags: clarity, complexity, disclosure, information design, plain English, simplicity, simplification

Jan 31st, 2007 by Irene Etzkorn

The secret weapon of the 2008 presidential campaign: information design

It’s popular to say that the next President of the US will be chosen based on sex or skin color or experience, but I know the real answer. The candidate who unleashes the power of information design will steal the show. Remember Ross Perot—the man’s looks and voice were certainly not his charm—but he engaged people with charts and graphics that conveyed complicated topics in terms that they could relate to.

The power of good information design is its ability to show relationships between events, numbers and items. Good information design is achieved when the display of the information enhances its meaning. Topics that are hard to grasp, such as amounts and probability, are prime candidates for graphic depiction. That’s why I was so delighted to see The New York Times create a graphic to put the annual cost of war in perspective in its January 17, 2007 edition. The graphic showed the $200 billion being spent annually on the Iraq war and then showed what $100 billion could buy instead (universal health care for all people in the US without it), what $10 billion could buy (carrying out the 9/11 Commission recommendations), etc. At least now I know what the monetary trade-offs are.

When Charles Gibson, television anchorman of ABC World News Tonight, wanted to convey the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans one year after the storm, he sought a graphic representation. On air, he contrasted the hefty telephone book of 2005 to the much slimmer book of 2006, and it was immediately obvious how many people and businesses had not returned after the storm. Television is a medium of images, and in addition to its ubiquity, imagery is the source of its power. In the instance of the phone book demonstration, Charlie Gibson was using an image (the phone books) within an image (the television broadcast), doubling the impact.

I’m well aware how easily images and graphics can be manipulated to distort meaning. What I’m hoping for is a candidate who will unleash the power of graphics for good, not evil.

So, in 2008, “It’s the picture, stupid.”

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tags: Uncategorized, clarity, information design, simplicity, simplification