Earlier in the year, I attended the VizThink ‘09 conference in San Jose. One of the highlights was Karl Gude’s one-day workshop about drawing information graphics (that is, diagrams that combine words and images to describe or explain something complicated). That was the second time I’d taken a workshop from Gude. There is something about his frenetic energy, disarming humour, and gift for storytelling that keeps me coming back. (Here’s a video interview that hints, but only just hints, at Gude’s teaching style.)

Gude is a pioneer in this field. Since the 1970s, he’s played a big role in making info-graphics mainstream with his work at newswires, newspapers, and a long stint at Newsweek magazine. Many techniques that information designers in journalism now take for granted owe their origins to Gude’s experimentation and innovation. He now teaches at Michigan State University, which has given him an opportunity to pluck lessons from his career to share with others. Given that there isn’t really a single place to learn the discipline of information-graphic design,[1] I find myself traveling far and wide to learn from the best. Gude certainly ranks among that élite.

Gude has an information design exercise about putting a lot of data into proper context. It involves having everyone in the class design paper airplanes. The planes are tested empirically by flying them down a hallway and measuring the results. How far did they travel? How true was their flight? How long in the air? Then the assignment: how do you portray that visually?

The class is broken into groups to develop an information graphic that depicts the results in a way that yields genuine insights. It’s such a useful exercise because, I think, it simulates product testing. Of course, relatively few product tests involve projectiles. I’ve thrown enough consumer products across the room to know that they weren’t really designed for that purpose. However, the exercise encourages us to think through the logic of describing product design and performance using visuals.

Gude has a stockpile of student graphics that he’s collected over the years. I’m adding mine to the pile; that is to say, I’m adding my portion of the team’s larger information graphic to the pile.[2] In a sense, my team created three different information graphics that, when combined, complemented each other and tell a larger story. I should add a few other qualifications. I changed the assignment in a few minor ways when reproducing my graphic. And, while designing it originally, I had extra help from a team mate who’s actually in the projectile business (high-tech, zillion-dollar weapon systems; catnip for excitable beta-males like myself). I was nursing a bad case of swine flu over the summer. So, I had a bit of time to create a polished info-graphic as I coughed up oysters onto my shiny MacBook Pro. Projectiles are definitely the grand theme here.

The team chose a format that Gude calls the “stereo speaker” design. It’s a common approach for multi-panel info-graphics within newspapers. Here’s the basic idea.

Apart from the “masthead” box at the top (containing titles and such), the boxes resemble an old-style stereo with the main components in the middle and the speakers on the sides. The top box in the middle is where the primary graphic goes. I placed an anchor in that box because that’s where you place a prominent, eye-catching, and orienting image, usually referred to as the “anchor graphic”. Less important information is placed in the other boxes, with the left box usually containing the next most important information because the top left is where the eye naturally gravitates towards (in cultures where people read from left to right). With some graphical finesse, you can divert the flow of the eye from such a pattern but that’s not what we’ve done here. This is Gude’s illustrative example. It’s just one of dozens of formats we could have chosen. This format allowed us to break into smaller groups and work on separate panels given the constraints of time.

You’ll find our mock-up above. Everything in the info-graphic business starts with a sketch. I worked on the central graphic. One of the criticisms voiced about that graphic is that it’s too cluttered. I agree. However, in my mind’s eye, I was picturing something much cleaner and drawn to a reasonable scale. It’s just difficult to pull that off with thick markers and easel paper while minding the clock.

To see my first attempt at creating a polished information graphic, click on the following image. The graphic is intended for 11 inch by 17 inch paper.

The objective of this info-graphic is to show how each team’s plane design performs according to several criteria: average distance of flight, straightness of flight, and height reached. All of these criteria may be important considerations for a product designer. The graphic is most useful in the way it allows the viewer to draw inferences about how performance relates to each plane’s design features.

I think this information graphic more or less passes the test found in Edward Tufte’s book Beautiful Evidence (2006). I took Tufte’s one-day workshop in Boston shortly after he released the book. The book contains a chapter about the “fundamental principles of analytical design,” something which was front and centre during the workshop. The principles are:

• “Show comparisons, contrasts, differences. …”
• “Show causality, mechanism, explanation, systematic structure. …”
• “Show multivariate data; that is, show more than 1 or 2 variables. …”
• “Completely integrate words, numbers, images, diagrams. …”
• “Thoroughly describe the evidence. Provide a detailed title, indicate the authors and sponsors, document the data sources, show complete measurement scales, point out relevant issues. …”
• “Analytical presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance, and integrity of their content.” (Tufte, 2006, pp. 126-136)

This may not be an exhaustive list of principles for designing information graphics. I’d argue, however, that these are the core principles to keep in mind.

My information graphic was explicitly designed to make meaningful comparisons. It juxtaposes the usage scenario (the images of the plane thrower) with several types of test data (distance, trajectory, deviation from the centre line, patterns of clustering) and with several types of design data (plane shape and measured plane characteristics). Data is also readily comparable within the test-data and design-data sections (e.g., the viewer can compare plane shapes with the drag coefficients). The info-graphic shows findings in three dimensional space by showing two-dimensional side- and top views in a couple of places. More often than not, true 3-D graphics can look cool but are difficult to read precisely, which defeats the purpose of information graphics that depend on comparing measurements. In this info-graphic, the precise comparisons allow the viewer to draw inferences about what is the best design strategy for a particular purpose. That speeds the next round of design tinkering.

Tufte might frown when reading the contextual information because I’m being a tad sarcastic instead of flatly descriptive. I don’t mean to impugn Tufte’s sense of humour, which is on the wry side of the spectrum. Gude is undoubtedly more receptive to a bit of laddishness, which is what you’re getting here. Normally I would describe the purpose of the test and add details necessary for interpreting the graphic.

Regardless, I’ve made sure to include the annotations necessary for an expert to fully interpret the tests. (It’s impossible to replicate the tests exactly without knowing the air density, plane thrust, angle of launch, paper weight, paper size, and paper finish; thus, I’ve stipulated those control factors in the footnote.) During the Boston workshop, Tufte was chanting “annotate, annotate, annotate” and that has long been my motto. I’m peeved by authors who drop important footnotes because they don’t understand them or don’t think the audience will care (or who won’t stand up to shortsighted editors). Gude raises a number of ethical challenges that relate to accurate reporting during his workshop, many of which are potentially solvable with a footnote or two. Plus, full disclosure compels the information designer to do proper homework and get the facts straight.

I’ve been trying to improve my illustration skills. I’m fond of a particular style that is popular in instructional pamphlets and manuals. The method involves drawing a thick outline around the figure and then drawing details with the sparing use of thinner lines. Colours are also used sparingly to avoid distraction. You’ll recognise the technique from the laminated safety brochure that airlines ask you to read prior to take-off. Here is my paper-plane throwing figure, properly proportioned, drawn with a subdued colour pallet, viewed from the side and from above.

I love the retro stylee. The more I draw these figures, the more I tend to add Hergé-esque details (such as pie eyes). I notice that this type of illustration is making a comeback. For example, I like Jason Lee’s work for Wired magazine (notably this graphic and this one too). The problem with this illustration style is that it looks better in print than online. Some of these illustrations can be converted easily into one-colour silhouettes that work well in small sizes on computer monitors given the lower resolutions involved.

I chose to depict the paper airplane diagrams in a more realistic style using various shades of gray.

My versions are not exactly photo-realistic, unlike this one. There is some intentional exaggeration. The point is to make certain details clear at small sizes in order to highlight major design features.

The side-view diagram doesn’t just show average distance and height, but also the average trajectory of each team’s plane. The top-view diagram shows the places where each plane landed (colour coded by team). This allows us to see where the planes of each team tend to cluster, if they cluster at all. The measures of central tendency (average distance and average deviance from the centre line) are also shown with thick lines. Instead of showing airplane landings as circular dots, as I drew them in the mock-up, I chose to show them as boomerang-like “V” shapes.

This choice of shape adds more data to the graphic. Not only do you have the position of the landing but also the direction the plane was facing when it landed. This is potentially useful because it tells us a little bit about the flight of the plane. Planes facing in the wrong direction are more likely to have a wonky flight-path. If many planes from a team are facing in the wrong direction, it says something about the ability of a plane design to produce a straight flight (or a graceful landing).

Plotting the landing spot of every plane results in a busy cloud of data points. That’s not much of a problem with a small number of planes. By fading the colours while keeping the colours distinctive, the cloud does its job without overwhelming other parts of the graph. Shapes remain clearly defined. I tend to follow Noah Iliinsky’s advice (2008, 2009) for complex information graphics when it comes to colour. Iliinsky argues that when a single graphic communicates several types of information, each type should be differentiated in some clear and consistent way. Colour is one differentiator. That’s why I keep some colours very muted (the colour of the plane thrower) but make sure that the eye-catching colours refer to only one thing throughout the graphic (team affiliation). I recommend taking the time to watch this slidecast by Iliinsky.

All of that considered, plotting a large number of landings would not be feasible with this approach. The size of the landing markers would have to shrink because, otherwise, there would be too much overlap and clutter. And there is a point beyond which more data points would make the graph look like a Jackson Pollock painting. Therefore, to cope with a large number of trials, I have redesigned the info-graphic using an alternative approach.

Instead of plotting each landing spot, I have opted to show only the measures of central tendency and the probable “drop zone” of each team’s planes. The probable drop zones are calculated with standard deviation, the most common measure of dispersion for this type of statistic. If the landings are “normally” distributed (i.e. like a bell-shaped curve), then a little more than two-thirds of the planes would land in the drop zone (+/- one standard deviation in each direction). The graph tells us, for example, that the blue team is the most consistent in terms of distance, whereas the red team is the least consistent. Thus, some landing patterns are even easier to figure out. Of course, by making the change to the graph, we lose the data about the direction each plane faced after landing. Alas, there are often tradeoffs to be made because presenting a giant data-dump can be self-defeating.

Many conclusions can be drawn from this infographic … and that’s rather the point.

There is a temptation, particularly among presenters using slideware, to just show the statistical highlights while telling a story. That can be done well. It is difficult to do, but is nonetheless doable; good presentations are inherently difficult to execute. I would point out, however, that there is a problematic phenomenon. Around the office, I call it the this-graph-goes-up/that-graph-goes-down oversimplification. This is the logic of the so-called “deck” presentation. The presenter just throws up a succession of simple messages: two of clubs, queen of hearts, nine of diamonds, and so forth; nothing too challenging. Presenters stay “on message” at all costs and, in so doing, omit “inconvenient” data that’s nonetheless important for an audience to know, as well as omit findings that involve interrupting qualifications and nuanced interpretations. (The opposite problem is a data scrawl of extremely complicated, and thus unreadable, graphs on low-resolution slides; all the while, presenters yammer-on about arcane and irrelevant details.) The oversimplification amounts to a baby-step’n sell-job that only shows stark, dramatic, and highly stylised trends and comparisons—telling details and divergent insights are abandoned entirely. Moreover, there are a number of underhanded graphing techniques for making findings very, very stark indeed. When presenting data visually, contrast is vital but simplistic distortion deserves an enthusiastic paddling.

Just to be clear, telling a tidy and coherent story is not the problem. Lack of candour and abundance of oversimplification is. There are situations in which the data lends itself to multiple interpretations. And audience members bring their own interpretive frameworks to the table with the potential to add genuine insight. The purpose of a well designed, aggregate-data-rich information graphic is to avoid the temptation to oversimplify. Simply print the infographic on a big piece of paper and hand out copies to the audience. The infographic provides a revealing description and set of comparisons. That makes it easy for audience members to draw their own conclusions. And a good presenter will persuasively offer her or his own intelligent and studied interpretation and thereby earn influence.

Some presenters are reluctant to communicate information in this way because they think it means giving up control over the message. Giving audience members the capacity to analyse ought to be the goal here. Sell-job artists find that threatening. Clued-in audience members certainly prefer the info-graphic approach. As an added bonus, the info-graphic is completely self-contained and portable. It can be interpreted without a presentation. That makes it easy to share and revisit. That’s more than can be said for the “deck” presentation.

Every time I’ve presented a slide show of data tic-tac-toe to a group of powerful decision-makers, I’ve always been met with yawns and lazy questions. They know that they’re being led down the garden path. They spend more time trying to figure out my political agenda than listening to me speak. Simply put, execs are weary of being spoon fed “the deck”. Data never speaks for itself. Yet, every time I’ve chosen to present using infographics like the one presented here, I don’t get a passive, suspicious audiences. I get a highly engaged and appreciative ones. Instead of feeling led down a path, the decision-makers feel in control because I’m putting them there. And a well designed infographic for something like product tests gets the seal of approval from both the data-minded engineers and the message-minded execs. That’s victory in that sad, little world.

Karl Gude does workshops for the Vizthink community every once in a while. I’ve just discovered that he’s facilitating a webinar in a few weeks. On-line is no substitute for Gude live but it’s something worth checking out.

By Peter Stoyko

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NOTES

[1] Yes, there is the Japanese Institute of Information Design. Several small American colleges are offering degrees or certificates on the subject. I’m going to attend the next Malofiej in Spain. However, none of this amounts to a one-stop shop.

[2] Apologies to my team mates. I had intended to reproduce the entire graphic. I even bought a bunch of origami books from an origami store in San Francisco’s Japantown district in order to learn how to best display paper-folding instructions. Perhaps I’ll leave that for a sequel.

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