Show Me.

Communication 4: Show Me.

I spoke at a public meeting about a proposed coastal project’s salinity effects in a treasured fisheries area. More than 200 people crowded into a cavernous hotel ballroom for the meeting. Proponents and opponents of the diversion applauded or booed the preceding speakers, depending on their point of view. I spoke, trying to be neutral on the project, but the crowds were having none of that.

The crowd’s raucous behavior continued through my usual PowerPoint presentation but at the end one of my colleagues had added a color animation of salinity contours pulsing in and out of the estuary. Projected on the ballroom’s 20-ft-tall ceilings, it looked like an IMAX movie of a human heart, pumping in and out bands of vibrant red, yellow, green, and blue. That room full of shouters suddenly became quiet and sat open-mouthed, mesmerized by the rich colors and majestic movement. When it finished, there were no boos, just applause and questions about how we had made the great animation. Graphics tamed the raging beast of partisanship in that hotel ballroom.

There is a specific field, info-graphics, devoted to creating compelling graphics. Color, size, texture, and orientation of objects can display the rich detail of data sets, particularly those derived from “big data” as it is now known. This cylinder plot from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office presents Federal spending in a much more understandable way than a tabular listing and it’s a very simple info-graphic. It’s better than a pie chart, which tends to over-emphasize large numbers. Its use of muted colors diminishes the impact somewhat.

An even better infographic example is this one of the electoral college votes in the 2016 U.S. election. Each state’s size is proportional to its number of electors, and the color indicates which candidate won that state’s votes. It conveys a huge amount of information in a single glance and invites a more detailed examination for more detail.

Source: By Ali Zifan - Cartogram—2012 Electoral Vote.svg by Kelvinsong, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48100982

Infographics can also show connections not readily discernible from ordinary displays. I made this connection diagram showing researchers (blue circles) and funding institutions (orange boxes) for proposals with the keyword “water.”  The blue circle size indicates the relative total funding amounts proposed by that researcher for water-related projects. Another version of this chart showed collaborations among the researchers but made the chart too busy to readily comprehend. That’s perhaps the most common failing of graphical displays.

Try infographics. They are best created by specialized software, particularly when the data sets are large but even PowerPoint offers the capability to construct them. You may find the services of an infographic expert to be useful.

Books and articles on speaking and writing offer great ideas on how to properly prepare ordinary graphics – adequate font sizes, uncrowded slides/figures, and such. I commend them to everyone. Some other tips for graphics accompanying your talk:

·       Don’t cram too much information into your presentation. As one expert put it, “Leave out anything but the pauses.” Your audience has to have time to think.

·       Don’t use too many slides. More than one per minute, on average, is too many unless it’s a travelogue.

·       Minimize the number of words per slide. Avoid complete sentences.

·       Always explain the axes and units of any X-Y plots. Make the labels large enough to read from a distance.

·       Use color but use it carefully, too many colors or too garish a combination distracts from the message.

·       Remove the X-Y plot internal grid lines unless they are essential to your message.

·       Increase the thickness (weight) of your lines.

·       Plot observed data as points, computed data as lines.

·       Remember that slides look different on your monitor then they do when projected. Test on a real screen for fonts and colors.

 Do you have a communication or miscommunication story? Share it with me.