Sadly, a good friend of mine suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. Luckily, it hasn't hampered his sense of humor. At his last visit to the clinic, he told me how excited he'd been when the doctor pulled out a chart that "would make it all clear".
No wonder our health care system is the envy of the world.
We know three things about Murphy:
Case in point:
There I was at VizThink, thirty minutes before my talk, happy that I had so much time to set up my fancy new tablet PC, connect it to the projector, and test out a few quick sketches. (With the tablet, I can draw directly on the PC's screen and everything is projected for all to see, just like a huge whiteboard.)
Of course, since Murphy was in the room, neither I nor the harried A/V guy could get the screen to 'mirror' on both the tablet and the projector. It had worked before, and it would work later, but it was not going to work that day with 60 people watching.
The problem was this: I had left many of the pages of my PowerPoint blank, intending to use the tablet pen to draw in the pertinent details before the audience. Cool. Except that now I could choose either to see the pages on my little PC screen only, OR have everyone see them up on the big screen -- leaving my PC screen dark.
Remember how I said I has thirty minutes? Not anymore. The room was full, the crowd was getting agitated, and I was getting ready to sweat big-time. The PC-projector combo was having none of it: nothing worked. Finally I had to make a decision: leave the room and never return, entertain the audience for my ninety minutes by slowly strangling the A/V guy, or believe my own rule:
"If you've got a good idea and a good whiteboard, you've got a great presentation."
I went for it. Balanced between half a PowerPoint and a whiteboard, the wonderful audience and I kept each other laughing (and learning) beyond our alloted time. If you were in that audience that day: THANK YOU!
What else did Murphy say: "The show must go on?" Had to be Murphy. That guy knew his stuff.
Meryl K. Evans is my new hero.
She has just posted the best list of visual-thinking resources EVER. Look here to see the most comprehensive list anywhere of visual thinking, information visualization, data representation, diagramming, and pictorial storytelling ideas.
The reason I'm personally so enthused about Maryl's list is because a month ago my hard-drive crashed. That tiny little "doubleclickclick" of death said tap-tap-hello.
Not to worry though, because I learned long ago (the hard way) to back up everything religiously. Except it had never occurred to me that I'd need to back up my bookmarks. (I know, DOH.)
Point being, I lost three years worth of web scouring and collecting. And along comes Meryl's list -- which above all IS BETTER THAN MINE! Whoopee! They're all back, and then some!
Anyway, thanks Meryl.
And yes, I now believe in del.icio.us.
More evidence that designers are the best people in the world for pissing off businesspeople: Conde Nast’s Portfolio site recently commissioned three top design firms to create fantasy redesigns of the Bloomberg terminal, the world’s most widely used financial analysis interface. The results show us why rank-and-file businesspeople still rightfully distrust designers: all these designs – regardless of cool they may appear – illustrate a fundamental ignorance by their designers of the very people who are supposed to use them.
Color: Ziba recommends the color red to indicate a stock story. RED?! Are they kidding? Rule #1 in finance: NEVER USE RED – it means loss.
Visual pace: IDEO’s oh-so-refined newsprint look says “the world is slow and steady and we’ve all got time to sit back and cogitate on it for as long as we need.” WRONG. Ever sit on a trading floor? You’ve never seen the world move so fast. It’s a loud, frantic place – and that’s the sense of urgency that the interface needs to support.
Eye candy: Thehappycorp’s heatmap-share price-lava lamp has something going for it. All they need to do is strip away all the Photoshop layers and we might be able to see what that something is.
It’s not all bad: the two things that are interesting are the proposed interaction devices. Thehappycorp’s recommendation to use a Wii controller is right on… but not for playing golf, you fools: use it to navigate the unbelievable complexity of the market! And Ziba’s puck has great potential: it reminds me of the scrollpads used in the more advanced air traffic control centers.
I’m passionate about this because I’ve recently been asked to help out on the redesign of a similar financial analytics interface. Just getting the finance analysts to sit in the room with us designers was already tough enough – when user-clueless designers start showing this kind of stuff it makes it harder for the rest of us who are trying to make something that actually helps.
In the ultimate battle of good versus evil, does PowerPoint help or hinder? Thanks Geoff for leading me to the briefing: http://lay-uh.ytmnd.com/
Experts hate pie charts. They hate them for different reasons, but the underlying distaste remains constant.
Personally, I kind of like pie charts for certain representational tasks. Maybe it's fond memories of the cognitive challenge of selecting which slice of pizza I wanted vs. which one I was going to leave for my brother. I get suspicious of all these quotes about "differences in angles are not easy to judge for the human eye" whenever I'm at a kindergartner's birthday party. Those kiddos don't seem to have a huge problem identifying the biggest piece. Maybe if we called them "cake charts" the experts would relax.
Anyway, I say that in defense of the humble pie chart, because now I'm about to eviscerate one.
I came across this in an annual report for Xcel Energy that I was thumbing through. This lovely little key lime pie chart struck me as so unreadable that I had to cut it out to keep forever.
The unreadability has nothing to do with it being a pie, but it has everything to do with the overly subtle variations in color and the decoupling of the visual from the legend.
I defy anyone to discern the percent of renewable resources. But then again, maybe that's the point.
Hint: look for a tiny (1%) slice headed southwest.
It's not really visual thinking, but this just irks me. Xerox's new color campaign supports all of us who like color in documents (good so far) but the ads take as their central point a set of "hard numbers" with no meaning and no attribution (not so good).
Color means: 82% more attention, 73% more comprehension, 80% better brand recognition, 39% more memorable impression -- these are their numbers, I'm not making this up.
Then again, maybe they are. Nowhere in their print or online adds could I find a attribution to what study is being quoted, what the comparisons are made against (black & white? tomatoes?) or context of any sort.
Yes, these are juicy numbers. Too bad we don't know what percent real juice.
(It's really a drag too, cause these would be great numbers to quote in a meeting with publishers.)
The perils of attending the M.D. school of penmanship: I saw this on a client's calendar yesterday. 
I just really like the term "Action plow".
