An awful diagram

Another example of a terrible diagram.

Chocolate Pie Chart

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my arguments against pie charts. However, I have finally found a legitimate use for pie charts - homemade chocolate! A company called Chocolate Editions has been reviewed in Wallpaper magazine for creating a chocolate pie chart. The result is 70% dark, 20% milk and 10% white chocolate. The percentages are reflected in the shape of the pie chart.

Doughnut pie chart madness

The Sydney Morning Herald ran an article on Australian eating habits on 30 July 2011. In an act of pie chart madness they felt the need to use the following pie chart:

Compounding the problem they used a terrible chequer board background.

Pie Chart fun

Here is an example of using pie charts for fun.

Label your Axes

Good practice for creating graphs is to label the x and y axes (and any other dimensions). Without good labels the reader is left guessing the meaning of your graph. A comical version of this is provided by GraphJam who provide the following:

Pie charts can make you laugh

One of my favourite bloggers is Jessica Hagy. Each day she publishes an index card with a comical graph. Most pie charts are terrible but this one about "I'm fine." amused me.

Getting creative with Pie Charts

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is a very successful organisation with an operating revenue of over $538 Million. However their success does not stop them creating strange pie charts. The following diagram is from page 35 of the ASX 2009 annual report.

The pie chart represents the number of referrals from the ASX to the Australian corporate regulator for possible breaches to trading laws or rules. The interesting innovation is the 'Total Referrals 88' which is the outer circle of the pie chart. Initially I thought this must represent the sum of the slices of the pie but the slices add up to more than 88. Then I spotted the asterisk indicating a single referral may contain more than one breach.

This pie chart should win an award for visual confusion. The total referrals number visually looks like it should equal the sum of the slices but it actually represents a very different number.

Edward Tufte and PowerPoint

Edward Tufte is famous for his books on the visual display of information. He is also well known for his dislike of PowerPoint. Check out how much Tufte hates PowerPoint by going here.

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.