Category Archives: Showing Data

The Power of The One Pager

My company recently overhauled our employee review process, and the most striking thing about the change is the main employee evaluation document: What was once 4-5 pages of multiple metrics and ratings is now one single, well-designed 8.5 x 11 sheet. Our HR department reduced the questions and metrics, but in doing so has made the process far more understandable, focused and effective for all. One now has an instant birds’ eye view with one glance.

It’s human nature when producing an important document to think that more text will equal greater import. But all you have to do is look at three of the most famous “one-pagers” from US history to see that one page can communicate things more world-changing than any of us will probably ever create. The Declaration of Independence is a masterpiece of conciseness. The Gettysburg Address even more so (written at a time when 2 hour speeches were standard). And Richard Nixon’s resignation letter says exactly what it needs to, and not a single thing more.

People Are More Likely to Read and Use a One Pager

When I began my current job, I inherited a creative brief that was 3 pages long, with so many unnecessary questions that it was rarely filled out by account teams. In redesigning the brief, I insisted that it be no more than one page. The redesigned PDF form can now be filled out in a few minutes and gives a complete overview of a project with one glance—no flipping pages to have a question answered.

Even data dense documents can be reduced to one page. Thomson Reuters recently released a “one page” annual report. (Thanks to Ideatransplant for writing about this.) 

It’s okay to broaden the definition of “one page” as Thomson Reuters does. The handout that Edward Tufte distributes at his seminars is a single, double-sided 11×17 sheet folded in half. I guess it’s technically 4 pages, but it’s still probably more effective than a 20 page booklet. (And probably more green and cost-effective).

Fix your Content to Fix Your Design to Fix Your Content

My screenwriting professor in college was a tyrant when it came to format. Standardization of font, spacing and margins is very important for film scripts for many reasons (one page needs to equal approximately one minute of screen time, for example.) But she was also insistent that no block of one character’s dialogue could span more than one page. We would get downgraded if we ever used “cont’d” on the following page. “Fix your writing to fix the format,” she’d say. It sounds crazy, but her reasoning quickly became clear. Long blocks of dialogue generally were an indication that we were not telling our story visually enough and were just overwriting our dialogue. To fix the formatting, we had to spend extra time examining every word and line, which always made our writing more efficient, direct and effective. I honestly can’t remember a time when fixing the format did not result in better writing on the page. 

So, by fixing the content to fix the format, we ended up with stronger content.

Even in the context of a larger print document, it’s good to aim for one page segments. I just made some additions to the reading list page of a workbook I created. It took 20 minutes to get it back to a single page, but I think it was worth it.

Supergraphics

When discussing the philosophy of less is more, I always feel the need to bring up “Supergraphics.” These are a type of printed graphic which instead of reducing information, seeks to include as much relevant content as possible. Examples of supergraphics are train schedules or baseball box scores (or Tufte’s favorite example, Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian campaign.) What makes supergraphics different from essential one pagers is that with the former, the reader is generally interested in only one piece of the information—the 5:56 train home, for example.

But whether you’re interested in only a piece of information (train schedule) or the entirety of the information (employee review form), keeping to a single page drastically increases the effectiveness and the reader’s ability to process the information. All you have to do is think to the last time you had to use one of those large folded train schedules with the weekend trains on the back. Not as easy to use as it could have been, right? 

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Categories: Printed Information, Reducing Text, Showing Data.

Edward Tufte

 

Of the dozen or so “go to” books I have on my desk at work, 4 of them are by Edward Tufte. 

Acknowledged as the godfather of information design, Tufte was an academic whose first self-published book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, became an instant classic and filled a huge unknown void. It was named one of the “100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century” by Amazon. He has since followed up with 3 more books (Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, Beautiful Evidence) along with his screed on the evils of Powerpoint, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.

Tufte is a passionate advocate for clear and effective data and information design, so much so that he was recently appointed to the President’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act advisory panel “to provide transparency in the use of Recovery-related funds.”

At times, I think Tufte goes a bit overboard in his railings against PowerPoint in that he views the software as synonymous with presentation itself (and bad presentation at that) and not simply as a tool—that can be used for good or for evil. Still, his analysis of and conclusion that the misuse of PowerPoint contributed to the Columbia Shuttle disaster is absolutely fascinating reading, and a worthwhile warning for anyone who relies on presentation to communicate a difficult, but important message.

While Tufte’s book are beautifully designed works of art, they can be a little daunting at time to the average reader. Still, I strongly recommend his regular one day seminars held around the country to anyone who has to present as part of their job. Seminar registrants are given a copy of each of the 4 books. From Tufte’s website, here are the upcoming seminars.

  • Denver, CO — June 11, 2010
  • Portland, OR  —  June 14, 2010
  • Seattle, WA  —  June 15 & 16, 2010

Tufte coined the term “chart junk” which I’ve talked about —all those extraneous gridlines, tick marks, 3D effects and redundant labels. And here Tufte shows his minimalist approach to data design. But he is also a big fan of packing as much useful information as you can into a graphic. Think of a well-designed train schedule or a subway map. In this area, Tufte always refers to a famous 1869 Charles Minard analysis of Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 March to Moscow as “the best statistical graphic ever drawn.” In a single visual, Minard elegantly plots a half-dozen variables, each of which could warrant its own separate chart.

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Categories: Books, Showing Data.

Don’t Use Pie Charts

If you ask me, “Should I use a pie chart for this data?” my answer will usually be “NO.”

People love their pie charts, but they really should be used sparingly and only when: 

  1. You need to show large differences in proportion
  2. The “whole” is significant to your story
  3. You have only 2 or 3 data points (or your data points can be grouped into 2-3 parts)

Let’s say I want to show a chart of teams that have won the World Series. If I stuck with just plugging in numbers and relying on Excel’s defaults, I might get this…

While the above is certainly colorful (and if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “Use more color to differentiate things…”), it couldn’t be farther from an effective display of data. First, the color-coded legend makes it impossible to reference the pie chart to find out which pie slice is which. And the lack of ranked order means it will take me days to figure out if the Reds have more wins than the Twins.  

The above is hardly any better. While you should always try to place labels on or next to pie pieces (legends for pie charts are almost always wrong), we can see here that the amount of and type of data is just not suited for a pie chart. While I could manually put in the number of wins for each team, Excel seems to only give you the automatic option of percentage labels. And who really cares that the A’s have won 9% of all World Series? (For those raising their eyebrows, that includes wins in both Philly and Oakland.)

What all this data is demonstrating is that there is a story not being told. There is no MEANING to this data visually except that lots of teams have gone all the way. There are a thousand stories in this data, but you have to pick one and then show it. So, now let’s look at a pie chart WITH MEANING…
 

 

This, obviously, is much better. Especially for New York fans. The above is a good use of a pie chart, and the story is clear. But we have lost a lot of data. Let’s put that data back in without losing the core MEANING OF OUR DATA, which is that the Yankees are pretty good over the long term.

The above is certainly better, but it still forces the viewer to look multiple places and doesn’t tell as complete a story in context and as effortlessly as it could. The reason is that a pie chart is just not the right format for so many pieces of data. And while it’s interesting to know that the Washington Nationals won it once (this was their much earlier incarnation…), the individual team numbers are not crucial to our Bronx Bombers story. The solution? 

Use a bar chart. Get rid of distracting colors, tick marks, unnecessary gridlines and most individual numbers. Without even a header or any further explanatory text, the story I’m now telling couldn’t be much clearer…

 

 

12 days until opening day!

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Categories: Showing Data.

Don’t Show Data. Show the MEANING of Your Data.

The visual display of data can be an art form, and the field of infographics has really started taking off the last few years. But you don’t need to have a graphics or information design degree to improve the storytelling of your own data. 

The goal of a chart or graph is simple: Don’t just show the data itself; show the MEANING of the data. The two below slides show the exact same data, but neither have any message. 

So, let’s give this data some context and meaning (and in the process take out a lot of the PowerPointyness.) 

Without adding or removing any of the data, the story starts to take shape visually. Obviously, we are showing that the US is by far the most obese country in the world at 31% of its population. This might very well do for this fictional presentation, but we can take it even further if we like…

Again, we haven’t changed the data at all, we’ve just given it MEANING. Also note that removing 3D, tick marks, needless axes and colors has actually focused the audience more on the important information.

The consulting firm McKinsey has an internal rule that any chart placed in a presentation or report must contain the meaning of the chart at the top left of it (i.e. “West coast sales lag the rest of the country.”) 

Still, while it is most often best to explain the meaning of on screen data like McKinsey does, there are times in guided presentations where it can actually be stronger to have a slide that requires explanation. But if you’re going to do this, then it’s often best to severely limit the data that you do show…

Regardless of how you present, try your best to show the visual story of the data and not just the data itself.

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Categories: Design, Showing Data.
visual training presentation