Another visual explainer

The Explanation Industry is on the rise, especially when the explanation uses compelling visuals. Check out a company called Say It Visually!. I especially liked their explanation about Skype.

Pie charts are evil

I recently spoke at Ignite Sydney on the topic 'Pie charts are evil'.

What?

I have just finished reading the 2009 Interim Report for Macquarie Airports (a publicly listed Australian company). The first two sentences of the CEO's report are:

In the first half of 2009, the proportionately consolidated proforma EBITDA of our airports fell 4.2%, outperforming the 7.2% decline in traffic. This demonstrates the value of active management.

I actually think it demonstrates an example of poor writing where incomprehensible jargon is used to validate the writer's assertions. I am astonished that a company with a market valuation of over 4.5 Billion dollars doesn't take more care with shareholder communication.

Did you know?

For years Xplane has been producing short, informative videos using interesting graphics. Below is there latest video, 'Did you know 4.0' with interesting facts about social media and communication technologies. It lasts 4 1/2 minutes.

Part of the Clear Messages Foundation course includes material on how to communicate using napkin diagrams. One of the big names in this space is Dan Roam, the author of "The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. I recently spotted the following Slideshare that Dan created using simple diagrams to explain the complex ideas behind Healthcare in the USA.

Healthcare Napkins All

View more documents from Dan Roam.

Processes in a circle

It is very common for iterative processes to be represented by a circle. A famous example is Deming's Plan Do Check Act:

I was surprised to recently learn that this diagram was actually created by Deming's teacher Shewhart. Anyway a problem with these diagrams is the reader does not know where to start. Let's look at another example from NIEM (National Information Exchange Model) - this diagram is available at NIEM's website.

The labels on each of the stages of the life cycle change their orientation causing the reader to tilt and re-tilt their head. The inputs and outputs from each stage are scattered all over the outside of the circle making it difficult to know what goes into and what comes out of each stage.

Here is the NIEM diagram re-drawn to keep the words in the same orientation and a clearer representation of inputs and outputs:

If you really want to use a circle to show that the process is iterative then consider the following style:

The horizontal arrows allow the reader to see where to start and make it easier to annotate with deliverables. The circle at the end gives force to the concept of iteration.

Some charting websites

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic, has a great blog site. Scott's comments are typically interesting and entertaining. Recently he blogged about how useful charts are at explaining concepts and this triggered a huge response from his followers.

I have harvested the following links to sites on charts. Some are great, some are not.

• Ross Perot founded Electronic Data Systems and made two substantial campaigns to become the President of the United States. He has built a fortune worth about $5 billion. He has set up a web site called Perot Charts which makes use of clear, effective charts to provide information about the US economy.
• Graphjam makes amusing charts but they are not clean and crisp. Amusement value only.
• A depressing chart showing similarities between 1929 stock market and today is available here.
• Mark Perry is an economist who makes good use of charts to explain the US economy.

A picture does not always tell 1,000 words

I was on Wikipedia researching information security (yes I am the world's most boring person). Anyway up popped the following picture:

There really should be laws against publishing such hideous diagrams on the web. What if a child should be exposed to such diagrams - they could be scarred for life!

So how do we fix this diagram? Sometimes text can be more powerful than a diagram. Let's try the following:

The three qualities to protect information assets is Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. These qualities are produced in information systems through hardware, software and communications. Apart from the information system the information assets are protected by policies that guide people on how to use security products.

Comparing lifecycles

The Data Management Body of Knowledge (DM BOK) was released in April 2009 and is well worth reading if you are into that sort of thing. One of the diagrams mapped the stages of the System Development LifeCycle (SDLC) to the Data Lifecycle. This mapping was represented by the following diagram:

This is O.K. but I had some quibbles about the headings appearing in different spots (i.e. above and below the diagram). I also did not like the meaningless variations in colour. The lack of a legend requires the reader to work out that green is used for both the SDLC and the parts of the data lifecycle that map to the SDLC. I also thought the lines that represent the mappings were too thick. I found that other readers did not get the mappings - it was not clear enough for them.

So I have had a stab at re-drawing it with the following (you will need to click on the diagram to read it):

My thinking was to stretch the data lifecycle chevrons to cover the SDLC chevrons. This then removed the needs for the lines and highlights how the data lifecycle extends beyond the SDLC. The use of a legend removes the need for distracting titles. I also chose to keep the chevrons the same colour and shape (the original diagram varies the shapes at the beginning and end of the lifecycle).

What do you think?

Medical illustrations and animations

Betsy A. Palay does great diagramming work for the medical community. Check out an excellent example of using animation to explain medical concepts here.

Timelines go from left to right

If your audience is from the western culture then they expect timelines to go from left to right. This is drilled into them at school and violations of this rule cause confusion. The following diagram is from ISO4216 and is meant to represent the process for evaluating product quality.

The timeline is shown on the right hand side going from top to bottom. It starts with 'Requirements Definition' and ends with 'Evaluation'. Very confusing. The arrows have different thickness (for no apparent reason); the boxes also have different thickness for their borders. Also the boxes represent activities so there names should start with verbs. Here is the diagram redrawn:

In the redrawn diagram I have also clarified exactly what are the inputs and outputs for each activity. I find it ironic that international quality standards often have poorly drawn diagrams.

Less is more - especially when it comes to arrows

A friend of mine recently gave me a rough draft version of a diagram she was working on. Here's the diagram:

Not bad - in fact better than most finished diagrams produced by many organisations. My first impression was of lots of arrows with different 'heaviness'. I was keen to reduce the number of arrows. My friend told me the diagram was intended to convey a hierarchy - Strategy at the top all the way through to Improvement. I was also concerned that 'New Service Initiatives' and 'Legacy Service' had several symbols with connecting arrows. So working on the 'Less is more' principle I came up with this:

I reduced the number of arrows by using chevrons and maintained the hierarchy. Concepts such as 'legacy service' now have only one symbol. I also addressed diagram hygiene by adding a legend and metadata such as author and version number.

Doodling improves your memory

Researchers at Plymouth University have found that doodling while listening to dull material helps maintain your focus. Find out more here.

ITIL - The home of bad diagrams

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) codifies the management of IT infrastructure, development and operations. It is also a rich source of bad diagrams. I recently came across this ITIL diagram:

Too many boxes and lines that overwhelm the reader. It is a classic example of violating the conclusion of Miller's paper The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.

A better approach is to use multiple diagrams. Let's begin with a high level diagram:

This high level diagram gives us context from which we can then dive into more detail. We also now have a title and legend to help the reader understand the diagram. The legend reveals problems, for example the lines nearly always represent deliverables however 'Early life support' is an activity not a deliverable. The original diagram allowed the same notation to represent different concepts.

The clearer diagram also makes it easier to see some weird things in ITIL. For example you would expect the 'Service design package' to feed into Service Design, but no it feeds into Service Transition!

Now lets dive into more detail about Service Strategy:

The box for Service Strategy is repeated as the title to help the reader navigate. The sub-stages are a different colour to highlight they are different from stages. The original diagram used lines with arrows to represent both deliverables and activities. The redrawn diagram fixes this, for example 'Develop Offerings' was changed to 'Offerings'.

The original diagram had additional concepts such as 'Return on Investment' and 'Financial Management'. These could be described in the supporting text. Do not overload diagrams or your message will be lost.

Interesting visualisation

One of my favourite websites is TED. TED is a conference organisation that has outstanding speakers explaining a range of topics. I just came across an interesting presentaton on a technology to visualise scientific data - you can see it here.

It is a hierarchy - not a flowchart!

I have just started using StumbleUpon, and literally stumbled upon a web site called The Toilet Paper. Each day they produce an amusing blog on something topical. One of their blogs was composed entirely of the following diagrams to explain U.S.A Federal Government expenditure:

It is a fun, interesting representation but it is also frustrating. The information is a hierarchy but it is being displayed in the style of a flowchart. The reader gets lost as they keep scrolling and scrolling. It is also full of distracting chartjunk. This is O.K. in a satrical blog but the problem is these styles are being used in business settings.

A more informative, though less visually exciting representation is:

We can now see some inconsistencies. The F22 Raptors do not have a second level breakdown. Department of State has an extra level breakdown for Israel. The breakdown for NASA is more of a commentary than displaying extra spending details.

The point is about the target audience. What is suitable for the audience of a blog called The Toilet Paper is not necessarily suitable for people in the workplace who need to quickly make informed decisions.

Inconsistency is death

I went to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about diagrams. In the top right corner was this flowchart:

I could criticise it i.e. why is 'Search Wikipedia' green when other processes, such as 'Think of another term' are red? However it conveys the message and of itself is relatively harmless.

Then I scrolled down the article where there is an example of a flowchart:

Now this is annoying. The notation has completely changed, e.g. decision points have gone from blue boxes to yellow diamonds. My motto is that inconsistency is death and Wikipedia has two flowcharts on the same page that looked completely different.

I also believe that less is more and question the use of showing decision points at all. Also the pink rectangle 'Lamp doesn't work' is a state and is too similar to the green rectangles which are processes rather than states.

Let's try another version:

The lines represent states and the boxes represent processes. The meaning of the message is still conveyed but with less effort for the reader. However does this need to be a diagram at all? For example:

This is less ambiguous and gets the point across.

Sunspot statistics

According to NASA in 2008 the Sun was at its the lowest level of sunspot activity for almost a century.Read more here. Even more curious was the bar chart that they used:

The data shows the number of days there was no sunspot activity in a particular year. Normally it is good practise to sequence bar charts from highest to lowest to help the reader assimilate information. Unfortunately in this example it causes the years to be out of sequence. Time should be sequenced from left to right with the left being the oldest date and the right being the most recent. I suspect the reason for colouring 2008 in yellow is because the sequence is wrong and the reader has difficulty finding 2008.

It is also jarring that the year is labelled on both the x axis and on the bar itself. My initial reaction on seeing the labels on the bar was that this was the number of units (i.e. 1913 days without Sunspot activity) rather than the year it occurred.

I would also avoid the lines running across the bar chart because it creates boxes that can distract.

Let's redraw the bar chart (I had to approximate the number of spotless days from the original diagram):

O.K. now I can some interesting things. 1911-1913 was big for spotless days. Then a 10 year break until 1923. Then another 10 year break until 1933. Then an 11 year break until 1944. Then a 10 year break until 1954. Then a 12 year break until 1996. Then a 11 year break until 2007-2008. The cycle of 10-12 years between spotless years was hidden from me until I sequenced the bar chart to match the passage of time.

Fun Diagrams

Jessica Hagy has a delightful blog located here. It uses various diagrams to show quirky insights into life. Below is an example.

Meaningless diagrams

The diagram above was taken from the Internet by a manager in the workplace and placed on the company's training portal. The manager said it explained Change Management (ITIL). It actually explains nothing.

The intersection of the circles are unlabelled - we do not know what they mean. The lines for people, process and technology are silly. Are they really trying to say that people are only involved in applications? Surely infrastructure and data require the involvement of people - technology and a bit of process cannot by themselves support infrastructure and data. The icon used to represent process is baffling.

The challenge is what would be a better diagram. Unfortunately the diagram is so poor we don't know what it was trying to communicate so we can't fix it.

Too many slices

If you have to use a pie chart - really there are better charts to explain data - then limit the number of segments on the pie chart to give the reader a fighting chance of understanding it.

The pie chart below is from Rio Tinto's 2008 annual report (Rio Tinto is one of the world's largest mining companies). Apart from being a doughnut pie chart, which makes cognition even harder, Rio has 10 segments they are trying to compare. Nancy Duarte in slide:ology recommends a limit of 8 segments in a pie chart. I think even 8 segments is too many and would go for a maximum of six segments.

Pretty pictures vs clear data representations

Graphic designers love to use colour and innovative diagrams to catch the readers eye. Unfortunately this can make it difficult to analyse any underlying data.

Below is a pie chart taken from the 2008 annual report for Westfield (the worlds largest shopping centre owner). Pie charts are difficult to analyse because the reader is expected to compare the differences in the angles of the pie slices. This pie chart also has a strange choice of colours with New Zealand and United Kingdom having very similar colours making it difficult to differentiate between them. The faint shadowy circle within the pie is also distracting.

Explaining economics with clear visuals

Clear, compelling visuals do not require high end illustrations. Common Craft is an organisation that knows how to use simple visuals to explain concepts. The video below is an example of where they explain how to invest money using basic drawings. Not only is it informative - it is also fun to watch!

Different ways to visually explain the Global Financial Crisis

The Global Financial Crisis is complex and everyone grapples with trying to understand how the world got into this mess. An excellent explanation using clever visual techniques is available on the Jonathan Jarvis's website.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Another good visual explanation of the crisis has been created by Xplane.

I like the Xplane explanation but Jonathan Jarvis is easier to follow. The strength of the Jarvis approach is he moves back and forth from a high level overview to more detail views. This allows us to keep track of the context of the answer and not get lost.

Lastly is a visual explanations that uses crude graphics (and crude language!) to explain the financial crisis. It is a good example of using very basic drawings to get your point across. View it here.

Brain Rules

I have just finished reading Brain Rules by John  Medina. It is a great book, full of insights on how to make your brain more effective.

In the Clear Messages Foundation Course we emphasis the technique of organising your ideas into a hierarchy. Medina's book back this up with brain research:

"... if you want to get the particulars correct, don't start with details. Start with key ideas and, in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions" p84, Brain Rules

The book goes on to describe research on how to differentiate between experts and novices. The difference is that experts do not simply memorise a collection of facts, rather they organise their knowledge around key concepts and this guides their thinking.

More details about Brain Rules go here, or better yet buy a copy of the book.