Trying stuff

Google is one of the few large companies that gets one fundamental rule of the Internet: Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it.

I recently ran a few training sessions about how to visualize and present complex data. The high point was a series of “extreme slide makeovers” in which I honed the message and cleaned up visuals from existing presentations. Here are some ideas to tame busy, confusing slides.

1. Simplify your slide master, make room for content. Fancy borders, elaborate fonts, and background images do little to impress your audience. They leave little room for communication, either. For those saddled with frilly corporate slides, you’ll have to take on the Brand Standards Police.

   It may help to get quantitative. Consider this PowerPoint standard slide master. Less than 50% of the total slide area (highlighted in green) is available for content.

   

2. Say something once, why say it again? The Talking Heads sang: You're talkin' a lot, but you're not sayin' anything / When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed / Say something once, why say it again?

   Wordy slides can be confusing and tedious. The author is using a lot of words—and often lots of qualifiers—in hopes that the core point lies somewhere within. The burden of synthesis is shifted to the audience. That’s not fair.

3. Make one point per slide. The take-away sentence on your slide should clearly state your point; the data on the slide should support that point. Any information that is tangential to the key concept can be pushed to an appendix or supporting slide.

4. Redundancies cause unnecessary repetition. I was surprised in my slide makeovers how often I found information that could be consolidated to simplify the slide. Redundancy came in many forms: multiple graphs repeating the same legend, axis labels that are described in a chart title, restating the same point.

5. Christmas is over, take down the decorations. Clear out clip art, “screenbeans”, and other images used to dress up the slide. Most effects are less “dazzling” than you might think. Eliminate gradients, shadows, 3D effects, and most animations. These design effects were exciting 10 years ago. But if they don’t help you communicate, move on.

   On the other hand, consider using full-screen photos as a way to convey a idea or theme, accompanied by few words. Here’s an example from a presentation I gave a few months back:

   

6. Reduce chart-junk. Excel and PowerPoint charts come pre-packaged with a heaping helping of chart-junk (“unnecessary or confusing visual elements”). Here are a few things I change in a default column chart: no shaded background, grey gridlines, no chart outline, no y-axis line, no column outlines, turn off auto resize text, change column colors to increase contrast. If you want to save yourself from chart-junk induced carpal tunnel syndrome, check out Chris’ chart cleaner Excel add-in. Sometimes charts aren’t necessary at all. If you’re using a pie or stacked column chart to show a single data point, the number alone will do the job more clearly.

   

7. Delete your “Text-junk” too. Text can contain “chart-junk” too—visual distractions in text that dilute your message.

   • Title Capitalization or Other Excessive and inconsistent use of Capital Letters. Title caps doesn’t make sense to use and is more difficult to read.
   • Underlining. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, use bold or italics.
   • Don’t use bullets when there is only one item or sentence. People have become so accustomed to using bullets that they’ll use them when they are totally unnecessary.
   • Bad fonts: The worst is Comic Sans MT, as the LMNOP blog describes: “These days, just like an e-mail from an “@ aol.com” address has a distinct lack of credibility, an e-mail written in this font makes the sender seem ridiculous and out of touch.”

8. Simplify style and formatting. Inconsistent colors, fonts, font sizes, and other styles are a subtle distraction. Limit yourself to three font colors (emphasis!, normal, low-emphasis), three font sizes, and three font styles. Here’s an example.

   Three colors

   

   Three sizes

   

   Three font-styles

   

   Putting it all together

   

All these points can be summed up as: Make everything on your slide serve your story. Best wishes for 2008!

(You might need to refer to this sniglets posting to fully appreciate this poem)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the building,
Not a report was running, not even one the spreadhead was wielding.
The CEO and his team had all gone home, the operations crew quiet.
Marketing and sales were at their parties, out blowing their diet.

I was finishing some email, almost through the pile,
When I saw one about the year-end report—the taste in my mouth just turned to bile.
Every year it was the same, the million dollar BI system full of chart junk.
When I give it to her, my manager will state with a gulp: “I think we’re sunk”.

Then out on the floor there arose such a ruckus,
I sprang from my cube to to see was the fuss was.
Away to the card swipe I flew like a blur,
It was an office creeper, I was quite sure.

The exit sign lights giving the desks an evil glow,
Made me think the end was near, the security number, I did not know.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
Not an intruder, but my friends from Juice, so dear.

With a my stack of prints in hand, it made me jump back!
Sure enough, I saw it was Chris and Zach.
With them came their team of ‘sperts,
As he called them by name, I knew then I should cancel my alerts.

“Now David, now Cat, now Jon and Jennie.”
As I looked, I saw more, I didn’t realize there were that many.
They were here to help, to make things easy,
“Stop killing trees” said Zach, “that’s just too cheezy!”

“Chart-based encryption makes your numbers stink,
Your boss won’t like it, she’ll want a drink.”
“Crossing The Last Mile is hard, I know” said Chris,
“That’s why we’re here. We’ve got the cure, take a look at this.”

What I saw! I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It made me want to shout—to celebrate with cries.
It was so simple and easy to understand.
A more fun solution can’t be found in the land.

No more analycide, flufferpoint, or dancing boloneys.
I could actually understand it. O’ The simplicity, the ease.
What they showed me was honest, true and clear
Had you looked in my eye, you would have seen a tear.

“Our mission here is done”, said Zach, “we’ve finished our work.”
“If you hurry home now, you won’t look too much like a jerk.”
“In the future don’t fret, don’t wait until boloney gives you the sicks,”
“Think of Tufte, of Few, and of Haler; then call Juice Analytics.”

They sprang to the Juice Mobile, “turbines to speed, generators to power,”
And away they all flew in the late holiday hour.
But I heard them exclaim, as they ran down the aisle,
“Merry Christmas to all, and finish The Last Mile!”

Juice wishes you and your loved ones a happy and wonderful Holiday Season!

From left to right, Zach, David, Cat, Ken, Chris, and Jon. Not shown, Jennie.

YouTube—MS Paint by freeloveforum

Ah—MS Paint. The endless limitations. This spoof video pokes fun at the design team who made this application.

YouTube—Amazing Footage of MS Paint

Completely amazing step by step footage of the creation of a great image with (you won't believe it) MS Paint - no kidding. This just goes to show that so many times it's not the tool that enables or limits, but the skills of the user.

ColorSchemer | Instant color schemes for your Mac with ColorSchemer Studio OSX

Mac tool to properly select colors that look good together. Adds a new tool to base the scheme on a photo as well.

Amazon.com: Visualizing Data: Books: Ben Fry

Ben Fry is good.

google ridefinder

Shows paths of shuttles in New York City. It's easy to pick up the outline of Manhattan.

daily FedEx plane network

Animation showing FedEx flight patterns over a 2 day period. It's easy to visually pick out patterns from this (i.e. there's no doubt where Memphis is).

Google new chart API

URL to plot charts and return the result as an image right in the browser.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who put things into two categories and those who don’t. Maybe this isn’t the best representation of the complexities of the human race, but it does give me a cheap lead-in to compare two types of problem solutions: “high tech,” focused on tools, and “high touch,” focused on interpersonal communications.

I was reminded of these two approaches by a recent interesting article in Wired that expresses an opinion about why America’s performance in Iraq has been disappointing. The basic premise of this article is that America has entered into this engagement in a “technology networked” fashion, drowning it in technology; the more, the better.

The article suggests that the US forces would make more progress if they were to spend more time on a “socially networked” approach. For instance, instead of remote controlling a drone from 100 miles away, spend more time drinking chai with local leaders. Not the absence of technology, but the incorporation of technology into a socially based environment.

“If I know where the enemy is, I can kill it. My problem is I can’t connect with the local population.” This was a quote from one division commander. Change a couple of words and you end up with a statement that many of us would find all too familiar:

“If I know where the inefficiency is, I can fix it. My problem is I can’t connect with my data.”

Aren’t we witnessing this in spades right now in the BI space? There’s no lack of number of tools and number of features in these tools. The challenge is figuring out who the real insurgents are and how you deal with them. If you’ve been reading the Juice blog for very long, you have a pretty good feeling for how we approach what we believe is a social problem (high touch) and not a technical one (high tech).

The good news is that the US forces are changing their approach to socialize more with the Iraqi people—hopefully leading to a better Iraq. Is there good news for the BI space? We’d like to hear from you on how you’re making sure you focus enough on the social “high touch” aspects of our space. What’s your insurgent data? How can you get to know it better?

Developer's Guide - Google Chart API - Google Code

Beautiful stuff, particularly the Venn diagram.

Align Journal - BI Worst Practices

We often see articles on BI "Best Practices" here is an article telling us what NOT to do.

flot - Google Code

Attractive Javascript plotting for jQuery.

ongoing · On Communication

Interesting blog post about how different forms of communication rank for immediacy, lifespan, and audience reached.

The Excel Magician: 70+ Excel Tips and Shortcuts to help you make Excel Magic : Codswallop

SlideShare

Source for presentation ideas.