Have you ever created an infographic?

No? Why not? Infographics can be a fun way to deliver information to different audiences. They can also be really easy to put together.

Yes? Which type? There are all sorts of different infographic styles and formats.

Today’s post features highlights from one of my pro workshop sessions. During the 33 minute session we walked through the design process for a particular kind of infographic that I call slide style.

• If you read through this post, I’ll get right to the takeaway points.
• But I also opened up this particular session recording because I hope it will give you a better idea of how these workshops are structured.
• To access the session recording, you can find it free-to-watch by clicking this link.

Don’t want to watch?

That’s okay, you’ll get the gist by scrolling through this post.

Takeaway #1 An infographic is an audience connection device. Not a report replacement.

One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot is when an organization tries to reach all of their audiences with one report.

People complain, asking for something more visual. So the organization responds by making one infographic. [Facepalm]

Yes, your report was probably super boring. But it likely also was built for either a non existent audience (something I refer to as Dr. Frankenstein’s Audience) or a very specific audience that does not include the person complaining.

Stop trying to serve everyone with one report.

One of the easiest ways to deliver multiple visual reports is to create a string of infographics designed to meet the needs of separate individual audiences.

Takeaway #2 Most infographics are designed using a formulaic process.

Have you ever watched a cable TV cooking show, home design show, game show, or pretty much any mass production TV program?

It can get pretty formulaic, can’t it?

For example, every episode of house hunters. Realtor meets with couple searching for home. Shows three homes. One is definitely not what they were looking to find. The second is what they asked for but probably not what they really need, and it’s also way over budget. The third is perfect, just a little over budget but they can stretch…

Formulas are just conventions and structures that make it easier to produce something creative on a deadline. Most infographics are not going to be genre twisting award winners. And unless you’re building a fancy creative portfolio, let your infographics be purposeful communication tools.

Takeaway #3 Constraints can be useful tools. Especially for something open like an infographic.

It’s hard to start with a blank canvas. Especially when that blank canvas can be any orientation or size that you can imagine.

Even as someone who spends his life creating stuff, I try to avoid the blank canvas. I also think that adding some constraints can make the design process much easier. Especially for something like infographics.

Looking for examples you like, and breaking down the components, can give you the proper foundation for a good infographic. This is also an effective strategy when working with a team.

Pull some examples, ask the team what they like. After they pick their favorites, tell them the exact word counts they should try not to go over if they want something similar. Also remind them that academic-speak and other jargon tend to have way more characters than the example infographic they probably chose.

Takeaway #4 A simple narrative can also guide your infographic creation.

We hear a lot about telling a story with data visualization. But it’s actually really hard to tell a story in just one frame. Usually you need at a least a few frames to properly set the story and then deliver the twist.

Infographics are hardly ever one frame, and this format gives you a lot of room to build. Considering there is rarely a limit on infographic length (unless you self-impose) you can take your time and develop a full narrative.

Creating and telling good stories takes practice, whether or not you use an infographic. But even telling a simple story can really boost the power of a report.

Activity – Create your own infographic.

If you do watch the video and decide to create your own infographic, I would love to see it.

Download it as a PNG and then share it on Twitter or LinkedIn. Mention my twitter handle (@clysy on twitter) or mention my name on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/clysy/). You can also just share a link in the comments.

DiY Data Design Workshop News

On Wednesday, October 13, we’ll have our 6th session (Splash Model Content Strategy). That means there are 5 other sessions you can watch right now if you join (~2.5 hours of content).

• Featured Images
• External Analytics
• Tableau One-Filter Dashboards
• Funnel Content Strategy
• Slide Style Infographics

I’ve also released the next 4 sessions. My plan with this workshop is to just keep presenting, 4 times every month. My goal is to create a large self-paced library with a wide range of workshop sessions you won’t find anywhere else. Then pair it with the kind of community and personal attention you rarely find at this price point.

Upcoming Sessions.

• 10/13 – Splash Model Content Strategy
• 10/20 – UX/UI Design Tools
• 10/27 – Social Media Insights
• 11/3 – Cartoon Illustration
• 11/10 – Slidedoc Reporting
• 11/17 – Personas and User Stories
• 11/24 – Thanksgiving Break
• 12/1 – Evaluating Resource Websites

Right now you can still join us at anytime. And at the moment, you can still lock in 20% off. This discount won’t last forever, so join us now!

Today’s post is a reflection on contemporary reporting, and how for many organizations, it looks almost identical to the approaches we used in the late 90s.

In today’s post:

• Why I think it’s time to kill the “let’s just stick a pdf on a resource page” information sharing paradigm.
• What has changed in the digital world since 1999.
• The rise of social media and the attention competition.
• Smartphones, tablets, big monitors, and the need for responsive design.
• The evolution of UX/UI design and a new set of software tools.
• Big data and easy access analytics.
• The big takeaway.

Time to kill the “let’s just stick a pdf on a resource page” information sharing paradigm.

So back in 1999, if you wanted to share a report, you would either create an html version of the report or (increasingly at the time) share a downloadable PDF.

Flash forward to 2021. Now if you wanted to share a report, most organizations simply share a downloadable PDF (or occasionally put together an html version).

This is what I call the “let’s just stick a pdf on a resource page” information sharing paradigm. It’s how countless organizations share their research and evaluation reports. And I think it’s time to evolve.

What has changed since 1999?

• Social Media. For instance, Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist until the 2000s. In 1999, Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school.
• Smart Phones and Flat Screen Monitors. The range of screen sizes you have in your home is incredibly wide compared to 1999.
• UX Design as a Web Design Paradigm. User experience design predates 1999, but it did not have anywhere near the reputation it has now-a-days.
• Big Data and Easy Access Analytics. Google Analytics didn’t launch until 2005, lots of websites still had hit counters in 1999.

1. The rise of social media and the attention competition.

Social media didn’t look nearly the same back in 1999. Blogger was launched that year and WordPress was a few years away. The now defunct GeoCities was the 3rd largest site one the web. As for peer to peer, it was pretty much email, old school internet forums, and AOL instant messenger.

It’s kind of amazing to think about how much social media has grown over the past two decades. There are so many ways for people and organizations to share their thoughts with the world today that just didn’t exist back then.

People are not losing their attention spans, they are just experiencing an overwhelming amount of new information. And the people who have monetized attention are playing hard, and not always fair. It means, if you really care about sharing, you need to up your own game.

2. Smartphones, tablets, big monitors, and the need for responsive design.

The iPhone wasn’t released until 2007. We had cell phones, but definitely not smart phones. As for the monitors on our desks, they were boxy picture tubes that could only get so big. Which was okay, because our computers could only power so much and nobody had the internet bandwidth we have now.

Today I often bounce back and forth between an iPad, a large PC laptop, an old MacBook, and my iPhone. The screens are wildly different, and so is the experience.

PDF technology really helped our field get their print reports onto the web. You didn’t have to learn web design to share a report. It looked like it did on paper and that worked more or less okay on old school computers. Not so much in our now multi-responsive world.

3. The evolution of UX/UI design and a new set of software tools.

When I think back to the late 90s I remember a lot of ugly websites. And as time went on, they started to get prettier but also more confusing.

In 1993 Don Norman coined the term “user experience” for his group at Apple Computer. (Watch Don explain the history of “UX” and what he thinks of how people use his word now.) But the field is older than the term.

A 100-Year View of User Experience – Nielsen Norman Group

In today’s software and web design worlds it is hard to miss the influence of user experience design. At the most basic level, it’s not so much a methodology as it’s a shift in perspective.

The original question, “what do we intend with this site and how does it perform?,” has been replaced with “what does the user experience and how can we improve that experience?”

It might not seem like much, but the simple shift in perspective changes so much in how we design. And the product is so much more relevant and useful.

4. Big data and easy access analytics.

In the early days of the web you would track web traffic based on how many times your server delivered data to a user. With these numbers you could pickup on things like, “how many times was a page visited?” or “how often was this pdf downloaded?”

Over time, analytics became more sophisticated. With web cookie based analytics programs like Google Analytics you can track just about every keystroke. You also get access to more information, sophisticated algorithms, and clean reports. There are also other external analytics data sources we can tap into.

All of this data provides us with a greater ability to influence strategy. But that assumes we have a strategy beyond, “let’s just stick our pdf on our report page.”

The big takeaway: It’s time for a change in strategy.

So to recap.

• Audience attention is finite, and there is more competition than ever.
• Our information viewing context has changed dramatically.
• We have new sets of methods we can use to understand audience needs and experience.
• We have sources of analytics that can directly guide our reporting strategy.

I am not against PDFs. Even super big PDFs that few people will ever read have their place in a larger strategy. But I think we can do better with how we share our research, evaluation, and other data than to default to same style of reporting we’ve been doing for the past 20+ years.

Instead, I advocate for strategic, thoughtful, and systematic approaches to information design. In a future post I’ll share my approach, a strategy that I call the splash model.