Mar 27 2012
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Thunderfly’s top five posts

Just a note to say that the Thunderfly blog will be returning later in the year, we’re both up to our eyes in other projects at the moment and unfortunately the full Thundefly has had to go into temporary hibernation. We’re both still around on Twitter @warrenpearce and @triplewicky where we link to intereseting dataviz and presentation stuff (amongst other things) and you can check a ton of useful bookmarks on effective communication (also still being updated) at https://pinboard.in/u:WarrenPearce/t:effcomm (also available as a RSS feed).

Also, we’ve been checking over the stats and thought we would recap the Top 5 most read posts over the last few months:

1) Gesalt and The Guardian: the chart obscuring GMG’s dwindling revenue

2) Starting from the beginning: using cognitive psychology to decide how you present information

3) Stephen Few and the dark arts of dataviz

4) Microsoft’s worst ever infographic

5) Look for the hook: a well-chosen image makes your research memorable

To date, the blog has been far more successful than we imagined. Thanks you to all our readers and commenters (that’s you!)

Nov 24 2011
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Tools of the trade: Wireless Presenter

Logitech Harmony 525 - Top

Thunderfly’s thirst for improving presentations is rooted in many hours spent trapped in front of energy-sapping, text-heavy Powerpoint decks. But while getting the slides right is important, and structuring your content is crucial, they’re not the whole story. As an individual, you have to try to act as ‘naturally’ as possible, something that’s not easy when you’re nervous and struggling with technology to get the right slides onscreen.

A few weeks ago I was at a conference where the keynote speaker punctuated their talk with a distracting ‘next slide!’ to a hapless lackey offstage manning the laptop. And I’ve seen all too many academic presenters inhibiting their efforts over the years by remaining half hidden behind the lectern in order to intermittently tap the keyboard. Either way, these distractions act as a barrier between presenter and audience and make it all the more likely that the people who are supposed to be listening to your pearls of wisdom will more likely be engaging their brain on their next meal.

The problem here is that the presenter is having to concentrate on computers, not content. You’ll likely be nervous standing up in front of an expectant (hopefully) crowd, don’t amplify the chance of something going wrong by going all fingers and thumbs at the keyboard. If you have the chance to walk natually round the stage, you’ll put yourself and your audience at ease and come across as more human, and competent, than someone chained to the lectern.

The little gadget that goes a long way to solving these problems is still the exception rather than the norm, so a plea to presenters everywhere – try and get your hands on a wireless presenter. There are loads on the market, and you can spend well in excess of 50 quid on a large box festooned with baffling buttons. We like our stuff faff-free on Thunderfly and when you’re worrying about what to say next, you need something that’s easy to use and hard to mess up. After three years of use, the wireless presenter from Kensington (affiliated link) definitely does the job in the field.

It has only four buttons: two to move back and forward between slides, one to black out the screen – very useful if you want to get your audience’s full attention – and a laser pointer if you like that sort of thing (or are a cat owner). A little USB stick pops in the computer, turn your Powerpoint/Keynote presentation on. It just works does a simple job very well.

Crucially, it allows you to get out from behind the lectern and move around the stage and the remote is simple enough to operate by touch without having to continually check you’re pressing the right button.

If you’ve got an iPhone/iPod and a Mac, you can do a similar job for much less money…in fact just 69p with the Keynote Remote (iTunes link, not affiliated) which will connect over wi-fi or bluetooth and allow you to remotely change slides as well as look at your speaker notes. Nifty, although potentially not as reliable as the infra-red goodness of the Kensington, particularly when working with unfamiliar technology. Although Apple gear is rapidly increasing in popularity, you’re still far more likely to be presented with a Windows set-up when presenting at a conference etc. Of course you could take a Macbook along and plug it into the projector, but that’s for another post…

Preparation remains the big deal when it comes to giving good presentations, but giving yourself the freedom to move around the stage and free yourself from the lectern will do wonders for your confidence and engagement with the audience. So beg, borrow or buy a wireless presenter – you might be surprised how much difference it makes.

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Nov 21 2011
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Tools of the trade: Camera

Over the past few months, Warren and I have shared some thoughts (and hopefully some useful tips) about presentations, and visualising data.  Today, I’d like to suggest that one of the most valuable tools you’ll use in your work isn’t something you learned on a course, and isn’t an object provided by your employer (if you have one) – it’s a camera.

Now, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that both Warren and I feel that improving the quality of your images – whether graphical figures, or illustrative pictures – can have a huge impact on the efficacy of your argument.  But while the internet has revolutionised our ability to access images, I think it’s well worth considering pictures you can take yourself.  

We’ve all seen the stock images of well groomed people in suits, shaking hands in airy, light-filled offices.

But who wouldn’t prefer to see the meeting they’re actually in?

Effcomm-groups-working-together

It’s not unusual for me to dig out my camera when I want to use images to illustrate a concept in a presentation.  Here are a couple of examples.

Scenario 1

When working with researchers or analysts, they often find it tricky to step back from the detail of their work, in order for them to decide what the key messages are, and how best to present them.  In order to communicate this message, I decided to use the metaphor of a recipe.  If you wanted to create a tasty dish, it would be a mistake to use all of the ingredients at your disposal.

Ingredients_wrong

You need to trust your experience and expertise to pick out the really important stuff.

Ingredients_right

Thank God, a custard and kiwi-free tomato sauce.

Scenario 2

As Warren has described previously, there is something of a magical (and memorable quality about grouping items in threes.  Setting aside ancient rules of rhetoric, I wanted to use a mnemonic to help people remember that I’d make three points; remembering that there are three points is the first step to remembering what they were, after all.  As conceptual points, I lacked an obviously visual way of communicating them.  So I decided to use an image which focused on the ‘three-ness’ instead.

3_key_messages_-_playing_cards.pdf

You might think that you need a big swanky camera to take pictures good enough to be used in a presentation or report, but in fact the majority of the images I’ve used are taken on a small digital point-and-click camera.  What’s more important is getting reasonable lighting (which is why, in both of my examples, the pictures were taken on my kitchen worksurfaces, where I could add all sorts of lights).  I then used a free image editor (Microsoft Picture Editor, in my case) to crop the images and increase the saturation, or make other changes.  And if you really don’t have time to conduct a mini photoshoot, don’t forget the power of the cameraphone – if you’re out and about, and spot a nice image, perhaps an entertaining contrast or even a 3D exploded pie chart in the wild, you can quickly snap it and put it into your next presentation; after all, when you’re taking your own pictures, you can be certain there are no issues with permission to use them!

 

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Nov 14 2011
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Bikes, infographics, and communicating data

Bikes are a longstanding love of mine.  When I last worked in an office that wasn’t part of my own house, I became an enthusiast for cycling to work, even when it involved changing into office wear in the building’s disabled loo, not being able to have a shower, and taking an elderly bike up to the fourth floor.  I started writing about biking to work, the obstacles and the incentives.  Now that my morning commute involves ambling upstairs from my kitchen with my fifth cup of tea, I have no need to cycle to work, so I find myself biking somewhere for lunch, or trying to do my grocery shopping by bike.  And after questioning the usefulness (and beauty) of infographics in data visualisation in last week’s post, I thought it was only right to show the attractive image below.

Created by Nau from the data collected by Bikes Belong, this image is more of a poster than an infographic – in fact, the only section of this which I would describe as a true infographic is the ‘bar chart’ about three times as many new bikes as cars being sold annually.  For the rest, it is simply an attractively designed way of communicating data; a less thoughtful design could simply have involved typing these numbers onto a stock image of people on bikes.  So, given that this demonstrates all the worst criticisms of infographics (what’s the point of it?), why am I showing it here in the hallowed halls of Thunderfly?

Well, I think it is important in this context to consider the audience for this image.  This is the kind of picture that could be printed out and posted up on a noticeboard at work; the bright colours and cartoon-y images draw attention and could start the discussion about transport between workplace and the home.  It acts as a tool for advocacy, showing that there is the possibility of reducing the reliance on cars and increasing bike travel, whilst asking us to consider the need for more facilities (secure bike parking, bike lanes, showers or just increased consideration from drivers) and how that might be achieved.  And it is inclusive, by showing cycling as a real alternative (particularly given the financial costs of running a car), rather than simply as a leisure activity, or as something only done by people in tight lycra.

So, this isn’t really an infographic.  It’s more than that.  It’s an illustrated thought-provoker. So what do you think?

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Nov 10 2011
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Fine line chart shows how China will overtake US #dataviz

Media_httpwwwslatecom_wdlps
via slate.com

Hey there, just a short post this week as I’m on a big thesis deadline, but saw this chart from Slate today and thought it worth sharing.

We’re often saying what not to do on Thunderfly (often because there’s so many dodgy figures out there), so it’s good to see a chart done right.

Six great things about this chart:

1. Title tells the story: what’s being shown (GDP share) and what the key story is.

2. Extra data included for comparison: four more key countries are included. These show exactly how far ahead US and China are, while also telling a story in themselves (India having overtaken Germany in 2006).

3. Clear representation of ‘latest data’: the bold vertical line at 2010 show us where the recorded data stops and the extrapolation starts.

4. Good labelling of lines: each line is labelled intuitively, using the country’s initial letter and so avoiding the tedious checking back and forth between key and figure when only colours are used.

5. Clear grid lines: Tufte might consider them a little *too* bold, but the lines stretching across from the vertical axis make it easy to see approximate values at any point on the trend lines.

6. Sources are clearly labelled.

One caveat…
Placing a hand over the chart after 2011, the trend isn’t nearly so startling; still significant but not the relentless closing shown on the figure. GDP growth forecasts are iffy at the best of times, so while the trend in recent years is clear, I wouldn’t necessarily be confident in extending that into the next few years. Following this, it might be preferable to slightly fade the ‘forecast’ section of the chart; for example with more translucent lines. As it stands, the ‘real’ and forecast data are given the same weight, pictorially at least.

Overall, this is an excellent chart, telling a big story at a glance using well sourced data.

(Thanks to @jamiepotter for tweeting the chart)

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Nov 07 2011
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The infographic backlash

A few weeks ago, the Guardian’s datablog published an article on the backlash that seems to be gathering against infographics.  Although they describe it as “gathering steam”, some of the sentiments they describe aren’t new: it’s just a pretty picture but it doesn’t actually tell you anything; the design choices obscure the actual data; is this going to be the pie chart that looks like Pac Man again?  In fact, here’s a critique of infographics which is nearly two years old.

Infographics_overload_poster_phil_gyford

The main point of the Guardian’s article is that tools that have developed in recent years allow people with all sorts of expertise and specialisms to create infographics (rather than just those who know about data, or about design).  Sometimes, this means that the folks putting those infographics together don’t follow some of the rules that you’ll hear about often at Thunderfly; and sometimes an infographic is used in the same way as stock photography – simply a colourful illustration to break up the text, rather than communicating a message on its own terms.

Now, I know that infographics are just one branch of visualising data, and I’m not averse to a bit of colour.  But I found myself in sympathy with the critics when I encountered this infographic, created for the political social media aggregator, Yatterbox.

Uk_politics_social_media_yatterbox

Here are the issues as I see it.  First of all, though, you’ll need to take off those sunglasses.  No, I don’t know why the designer has chosen a tartan background, unless he particularly wanted to bring out the way it clashes horribly with the Union Jack header.  So, first issue: the designer wants to pack in all sorts of information, using a number of different techniques, but the background image draws immediate attention to itself at the expense of communicating their insight.

The stacked bar chart of social media usage isn’t too bad; the colours used are related to the service in question (turquoise for Twitter, dark blue for Facebook, poor old Flickr gets white) so the design draws upon our pre-existing brand knowledge as a design shortcut.  But adding white space between the bars makes it tricky to draw comparisons, and the rounded corners also change the shape, and therefore the accuracy, of the sections.  I’m not convinced that the orange bar for RSS feeds looks more than twice the size of the blue Facebook bar.

The bar chart on ‘When they joined Twitter’ has left me questioning the scale.  Is that a percentage of the people they follow? Raw numbers? I can see that early 2009 was a popular time to get a Twitter account, but how easy is it to compare the second half of 2009 with the first half of 2010?

I’m not sure how relevant – or indeed reliable – the infographics are that are generated from Klout data.  Listing the Twitter handles of the ‘most influential’ or ‘most influenced’ means that I don’t know whether they’re real people or just bots that retweet from elsewhere.  And finally, although the last few snippets are interesting, they’re not really ‘Trends to Watch’.

What do you think? Are infographics just treated like pictures? What are the positives of the example I’ve picked out? And does it matter whether infographics are accurate?

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Oct 27 2011
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Attention! Why your presentation needs emotion as well as evidence.

Trooping the Cololur

There’s a cracking (and lengthy) post by Christopher Fahey and Timothy Meaney building on their talk from this year’s SXSW conference: Conversation is the New Attention. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, including an inspiring story about a presenter using only his smartphone for speaking notes and wandering amongst the audience as he spoke. While it’s worth a read just for that, I want to highlight something towards the end of the piece, which draws on John Medina’s fine book Brain Rules.

Fahey and Meaney talk about the problems of keeping your audience’s attention in a presentation – at a tech-y conference, people may start to fiddle more with their phones, in a university tutorial a student may simply fall asleep (happened to me last week). In an attempt to avoid this fate, the authors talk about Medina’s four characteristics of ‘attention’:

1. Emotions get our attention

Attention is most easily gripped by emotions, threats, and pleasures: ideas that challenge our deeply-held beliefs, images that shock or arouse us.

2. Meaning before details

We want to know why something is relevant to us. Only then will we be willing to spend the time it takes to understand the details of it.

3. The brain cannot multitask

The idea that multitasking is a myth seems to be well-established by now, although a decade ago it seemed like multitasking was the inevitable future of human consciousness. We are learning to work with, not against, our cognitive limitations. (Max Atkinson touches on the trouble with multitasking).

4. The brain needs a break

We believe in giving audiences freedom, even if it’s the freedom to zone out or take a break from one part of a talk to focus on another part. That’s how people learn. (Middendorf & Kalish makes the case for breaking up the one-to-many lecture template).

The first two here are perhaps less well-explored, while perhaps being even more important. If you don’t hook someone into your presentation at the outset, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage for the remainder of your talk and increasing the risk of audience-noddy-head-syndrome.

So two quick examples of what this means in practice…

Emotions before details: Seth Godin’s post on “Really Bad Powerpoint” contains a great example of how to use a Powerpoint slide to your advantage, with an image that has stuck in my mind ever since:

Talking about pollution in Houston? Instead of giving me four bullet points of EPA data, why not read me the stats but show me a photo of a bunch of dead birds, some smog and even a diseased lung? This is cheating! It’s unfair! It works.

Don’t *just* show an image of a dead bird without any evidence to back you up, but adding such an image to the data you’re trying to convey gives you a head-start in the attention stakes.

Meaning before details: Actually, we’re better off thinking about this before emotion. What does our audience want out of our talk? they need to know “What’s in it for me?”. This is where a different kind of preparation comes in handy. What sort of person is in the audience? Why are they attending the event you’re speaking at? How could your content connect with their concerns?

Here, I should point you in the direction of an excellent Thesis Whisperer post telling a tale of a well delivered but poorly received conference presentation, followed by some thoughts on how to avoid the same fate. Don’t forget to tailor at least part of your talk to your audience – if you just deliver something verbatim “off the shelf” chances are you won’t be asked back.

Wrap-up: While the work on making Powerpoint less text-based and more captivating must continue, good slides alone won’t connect with your audience. And while details are crucially important in making a compelling argument, a presentation is not necessarily the best place to reveal a lot of them.

Instead, think about what your audience wants out of your talk, how you can ensure your argument is relveant to their concerns and how you can hook them in with an appeal to their emotions before unleashing a stream of data.

We’re always looking for new examples of good practice here at Thunderfly, so what presentations have you seen which grabbed you from the off?

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