April 24, 2007
Information Design Watch
From Dynamic Diagrams
Design for Understanding
All of these articles first appeared on our Information Design Watch blog. Please visit the blog to view additional entries not included in the newsletter. You also can register and comment on most posts.
In This Issue:
VISUAL EXPLANATION
- On Tufte and Napoleon's March
- The Neurological Case for Diagrams
- Google Presents Gapminder
TECHNOLOGY
- Microsoft on Channel 9
- Netscape is Number 1...
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS
- Information Architect Needed
VISUAL EXPLANATION
On Tufte and Napoleon's March
Posted by Mac McBurney
In February, the Dynamic Diagrams staff made a field trip (some might say pilgrimage) to Edward Tufte's day-long seminar, "Presenting Data and Information." If you've ever heard of Edward Tufte, you have probably seen Napoleon's March to Moscow, Charles Josef Minard's visual explanation of Napoleon's disastrous attempt to conquer Russia in 1812.
Tufte says, "it may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn." The graphic appears repeatedly in Tufte's books, posters and brochures. At the recent seminar, I realized that the image has become a defacto corporate logo of Tufte and Graphics Press. At the seminar, the graphic was used in a sign directing participants from the hotel lobby to the upstairs lecture hall. It worked: Napoleon's March quickly caught my eye and confirmed I was headed in the right direction.
Conventional wisdom v. six-variable masterpiece of information design
Because Napoleon's March is so innovative, so lauded, so pervasive in Edwardtufteland and so emblematic of Tufte's teachings, it was (I'm chagrined to admit) not easy for me to see that it undermines, rather than supports, the conventional view of the historical events. (Thanks to Piotr, creative director at d/D, for leading the way.)
Minard created his map to show the horrors of war. Tufte uses it to explain grand principles of data display. Both are succeessful, but Tufte misses an opportunity to emphasize just how powerful Minard's graphic is. Tufte repeats the popular belief that "General Winter" defeated Napoleon's army. I haven't studied the history since high school, but this fits the image that sticks in my head: soldiers freezing to death.
In fact, according to Minard's map, nearly three times as many French soldiers were lost (never mind the Russians) before the retreat and before the coldest weather. 90,000 died on the retreat--horrible to be sure--but 250,000 were lost before that. Only because the map follows Tufte's grand principle number one, show the data, are we able to really question the conventional wisdom, ask useful questions and formulate alternate narratives. Now that I'm re-thinking my own understanding, I wonder why Tufte even mentions General Winter as the moral of the story.
Recency bias
In addition to temperature itself and the impending threat of winter, I suspect another factor strengthens the prevailing interpretation: recency bias. Only ten thousand French soldiers lived to tell the tale. They had just endured three months of immense suffering and witnessed the deaths of 90,000 comrades (90% of the retreating force). It's hard to imagine their state of mind, but the previous summer was probably a distant memory.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters
The Neurological Case for Diagrams
Posted by Henry Woodbury
Researchers at the University of New South Wales say the brain is not equipped to read and listen at the same time:
The findings show there are limits on the brain's capacity to process and retain information in short-term memory.
John Sweller, from the university's faculty of education, developed the "cognitive load theory".
"The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster," Professor Sweller said. "It should be ditched."
"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented." (my emphasis)
Powerpoint is everyone's favorite target these days, but of course, it's how people use Powerpoint that is the problem.
Also interesting: People learn by studying already solved problems. Learn a solution and you have a better chance of applying it the next time you run into a problem.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/03/1175366240499.html
Google Presents Gapminder
Posted by Henry Woodbury
We last mentioned Hans Rosling and his stunning displays of economic data in reference to his 2006 TED Conference presentation (view it on YouTube).
Now Rosling offers Gapminder World on Google. As with Rosling's other shared statistical applications, you can define your own indices and run your own animations. And, with Google's Subscribed Links feature, you can target the Gapminder World dataset when you do a Google search.
You can still view or download other Gapminder applications on the Gapminder web site.
http://tools.google.com/gapminder/
http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/applications/
TECHNOLOGY
Netscape is Number 1...
Posted by Henry Woodbury
...on PC World's list of the 50 best tech products of all time:
Netscape was the reason people started spending hours a day on the Internet, leading to the boom (and bust) of many a Web site. The advent of the browser also led to the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust suit against Microsoft, after the company embedded Internet Explorer into Windows. And Netscape's August 9, 1995, IPO is universally considered to be the official start of the dot-com era.
It's all there: popularity, impact, influence.
Are there any "aha" moments in the list? Instead of one-and-done devices like the Zip drive (#23), how about TurboTax (#38)? Now that's a piece of software with ongoing impact. Once software handles the tax code (on the front-end and the back) it changes how the tax code can be permitted to change.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130207-page,1-c,technology/article.html
Microsoft on Channel 9
Posted by Henry Woodbury
We've linked to Channel 9 before (see here). With its blog format and aggressive comments section, you might not guess it was sanctioned by Microsoft -- until you notice the "Microsoft Communities" bar at the top and the little "msdn" in the URL.
Now Wired describes how Channel 9 was born and how it has generated great PR for the company normally viewed as centralized, bureaucratic, and secretive:
...marketers say [Microsoft] has become the model for how corporations can use the Internet to manage their image. "The messages coming out of Microsoft used to be so one-dimensional and managed," says John McKinley, who until the end of 2006 was CTO and head of digital services for AOL. "Now you can get four clicks into the organization and see engineers talking about products. It gives Microsoft a human face."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_microsoft.html
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS
Information Architect Needed
Join the Dynamic Diagrams team and help create new ways to visualize complex information! We have a full-time, permanent position open for an information design professional with proven experience in information architecture, usability, and communications. For details, see our Careers page:
http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/about/careers.html
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