More on Minard

A few other thoughts came to mind after my last post.

I didn’t know Chuck Minard, but I speculate that if he were alive today and wanted to use Powerpoint to speak to large groups, he might look to Garr Reynolds or Duarte Design for some ideas on making the presentation experience meaningful and memorable (see Al Gore). If he was speaking to a small group or even a single person, he might follow some of Andrew Arbela's advice on conference room style presentations.

As it is, I don’t think he was doing either.

Charles Joseph Minard lived in a very different time than we do. Isn’t it a little silly to comment on a graphic dawn almost 150 years ago using today’s context where we use tools like Powerpoint and Adobe Illustrator and where every speech assumes a projected slide show?

I mean – really?

If Minard were alive today, maybe he would be making a movie about the senseless waste of 412,000 lives in 1812, or self-publish a book, or write a blog – who knows? Point is that we can’t really understand Minard’s 19th century world using our 21st century reference points.

Still, compare it to some other 1861 graphics to see how very good this was then, and how very relevant the lessons are for modern information design. Minard’s graphic is still a better image for conference room style presentations than much of what is produced today, and remains a useful model for a single image that could be spoken to and left behind – tangible evidence of a good story told in a small group.

Ok, enough of that. I’ll now let Minard rest in peace.

Minard, Tufte, Zelazny et al

An interesting discussion for information and presentation design geeks going on around Andrew Arbela’s recent post highlighting Gene Zelazny’s commentary on the Tufte favorite chart by Charles Joseph Minard documenting Napoleon’s march on Russia.

For those unfamiliar with the players:

• Andrew Arbela, author of The Extreme Presentation Method, created a very good framework for the two fundamentally different styles of presentations: ballroom style vs. conference room style. He has plenty of research to back-up his ideas, and doesn’t get caught up in the quasi-religious debate around Powerpoint. 
• Gene Zelazny is the Director of Visual Communications for McKinsey & Company and has written two presentation-related books. Up until now, his advice has usually been pretty good, especially as related to professional service firms, even if his graphic style has been underwhelming at times.
• Edward Tufte is the eclectic statistician and Professor Emeritus at Yale who has written and self-published several seminal books on information design. It is difficult to overstate his influence on information design and the visual display of data (he teaches a one-day course, highly recommended). He is famously critical of Powerpoint.
• Charles Joseph Minard was an obscure French civil engineer (1781–1870) who was one of the pioneers of information graphics. The particular diagram in question is an 1861 drawing that Tufte noted “may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.” Over time, the amount of energy spent discussing this one graphic and Tufte’s original comment is amazing (read: silly).

Anyway, Mr. Zelazny wrote an essay (3.6MB pdf) to “concentrate on the virtues of PowerPoint as a tool,” presumably leaving the philosophical debate to others. He correctly points out how quickly one can create reasonably good graphics with the tools in PP, and reminisces about how labor-intensive creating these sorts of things used to be. So far, so good. He then poses an interesting question (essentially): how would one translate the chart into a presentation today (sort of what would Minard do?). Then things get weird:

1. Mr. Z seems to fall into the all presentations are the same false logic that Arbela argues against. I find this strange as I’ll bet most of McKinsey’s own presentations and deliverables are much more like conference room style presentations (or what we used to call documents) than the examples that follow in the essay.
2. The example slides in the essay are the very sort of thing that anti-Powerpoint zealots (like Tufte) point to as illustrations of what is so wrong with the state of presentations today (with the possible exception of the cartoons by the Archie Comics’ AD, which are at least humorous if not necessarily effective).

To me, the irony in much of the discussion, opinion, and alternatives about the original Minard graphic is that in his original 1983 book, Tufte discusses this graphic in the context of graphic excellence. The idea that graphical displays should reveal information clearly, precisely, and efficiently. They should start with good information and be well-designed, and they should avoid falsehoods (e.g. graphical distortions) and meaningless distractions (e.g., clip art).

I have a small poster of this on my wall. When people comment on it I remind them that it is essentially an anti-war poster. Napoleon left Poland with 422,000 men and returned six months later with 10,000. Is any treasure worth 412,000 souls? Isn’t that the story Minard was telling?

Business book mashup

Weird idea when you combine two recent business books’ ideas:

1. Design Thinking (Roger Martin). Basic idea: innovation requires balance of exploration and exploitation to move ideas from mystery to heuristic to algorithm. Organizations need exploration (creativity, few rules, etc.) to move stuff from one knowledge stage to the next, but need exploitation (classic business administration, streamlining, etc.) within the heuristic and algorithm stages to really make money at it and leverage an organization’s scale.

2. Drive (Dan Pink). Basic idea: traditional incentives (money, carrot, stick, etc.) only work as motivators for simple, straight forward, algorithmic tasks; but those motivators don’t work for more complicated, conceptual tasks that require creative thinking. Not only do they not work, they actually have a negative effect, proven again and again through countless psychology, sociology, and economic research.

This suggests that goals and metrics should depend very much on the context of a situation – more traditional metrics and rewards where exploitation is the goal (most easily applied when knowledge is at the algorithm stage), more intrinsic motivators when exploration is the desired outcome (that is, moving knowledge from one stage to the next).

New media, newer media

Interesting post by Seth a few days ago, his last line stuck out:

I saw a two-year old kid (in diapers, in a stroller), using an iPod Touch today. Not just looking at it, but browsing menus and interacting. This is a revolution, guys.

Whatever business you’re in, this applies to you. There may even be an inverse relationship between the strength of your disbelief or denial and the relevance to your job, business, industry.

We have met the enemy, and it is first-draft design

Excellent commentary by Nancy Duarte on the recent NYT article. (A more readable version of the original alarming graphic is also available.)

A few things about the graphic:

1) This is an example of a diagram that was probably developed by analysts to help them understand something. Think brainstorming. The presentation mistake here (aside from the general bullet bullet bullet approach) was trying to use the same diagram to explain things to people who were most likely not part of the original discussion. Of course it stinks for that purpose. To build on Nancy’s commentary on our first-draft culture, it’s easy to imagine the excited consultants transposing this diagram from a whiteboard into PP, then – confusing the effort that went into drawing it with its value – it subsequently showing up in every PP deck that discussed the topic for the next year. What appears to be missing was the second (or third) iteration: translating the understanding into a diagram that explains the important points.

2) As a consultant, and not knowing the full story, I am disappointed and embarrassed that this diagram ever made it out of the working group and onto the screen of a client. On the surface this seems like a pretty serious delivery failure. In my own experience I have often seen (and created) some pretty confusing diagrams and models in the course of trying to understand a complex problem or system. But those things usually end their life on a white board or as a scan, they rarely survive in their original form as a deliverable because they were never intended to be such. The final deliverable often bears no resemblance to the original because after we think we understand an issue, the focus changes to explaining it. And those questions are different (see Dan Roam), so the results are usually different. I have referred to this as iterative design but for it to work, you have to actually do the next iteration.

So the moral of the story is: do the second iteration, your audience will thank you.

Are presentations a new type of media?

Think about it. Presentations are evolving into something that looks a lot like its own type of media experience. Neither speech nor document, they increasingly draw on multiple media skills:

• Public speaking
• Storytelling
• Event planning 
• Theater
• Visual communication, 2D design
• Document design
• Web or online design 
• Typography
• Photography
• Audio
• Video
• Animation

Thirty years ago, a speech was a speech. If you wanted to add additional elements (35mm slides, video, handouts, a survey beforehand, etc.), then you needed additional time and resources to get it done. It just wasn’t feasible for many ordinary people or organizations to create TED-like presentations with the skills and tools at their disposal.

(Yes, I know, you still needed the technical and creative skills, but you also needed access to the tools, and those tools all came with some non-trivial cost: either time, money, or both.)

Today the tools are ubiquitous. Not just Powerpoint, but almost everything necessary to create a great presentation (read: event) is widely available. And yet most presentations are so bad (bad to listen to, bad to watch, bad to look at).

It’s easy to blame Powerpoint, but maybe another explanation is because, as a new media form, presentations are still young. Early photography tried to copy painting (not so well), early movies copied theater (not so well), early television copied radio shows (really not well) – so maybe one reason that so many presentations stink is because the form is still trying to figure itself out.

Not an excuse to do a bad job, but if you do a great job, maybe you’re a pioneer in a brand new type of media experience.

The Kalashnikov as good design (and good story-telling)

A great post by Dave Gray, not only making the case for the AK-47 as a great example of good design (designed for the real world), but also explaining how talking about an assault rifle probably makes for a better presentation than some less-dramatic example.

Mr. Tufte goes to Washington

From the BusinessWeek Innovation and Design blog:

President Obama Appoints Edward Tufte – Big Victory for Data Visualization And Transparent Government

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Tufte, he has written a few seminal books on presenting information and is one of the strongest advocates for clarity and purpose in all sorts of information and presentation design. He also teaches an excellent one-day course on presenting data (highly recommended).

His appointment to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel is a good thing for more transparency and usefulness in government.

Congratulations Edward.

Hello, I'm back

Sorry for the long absence. Just saw another fairly edgy band close Letterman, and it got me thinking. Even though Dave presents himself as a middle-of-the-road midwest guy, his actions (as least as far as music is concerned) usually support up-and-coming bands. And it occasionally surprises people, even long-time fans like me. I found myself just now thinking “wow, that's different.” 

So... how can you jiggle your audiences expectations? Given your audience, are there things you can do that (like Dave) not only shake people’s expectations about you, but also give them insight into your values?

Ubiquitous hyphens and dashes

In my work, I come across a particular subset of Powerpoint authors: otherwise smart people who start adding hyphens and dashes all over the place. Their slides become odd-looking typographic mazes with weird spacing and way-to-many little horizontal gashes. It’s as if they’ve forgotten about other perfectly good punctuation like commas, colons, and parenthesis.

I’m sure this is not intentional - it may just seem like the right character to use - especially when you’re composing your 10th bullet point - and you’re on a roll - and the content just keeps coming - and you don’t want to stop or you’ll loose your train of thought - so a hyphen is quick and easy.

But…

It doesn’t really serve you or your content well. Dashes visually break the flow of a phrase, and that is often counter to the intention of the writer or presenter. Editing can help. Here are some alternatives to dash overload:

• Use a colon instead. If you have a headline that states a fact followed by some consequence or effect, use a colon (e.g., Energy Inefficiency: Over 57% Energy Wasted in U.S.)
• Use a period. Separate the item from its description in a bullet list with a period, such as this list. Using boldface for just the item also helps with legibility.
• Parenthesis. If an phrase is parenthetical (i.e., supplementary to your main idea), put that phrase in parenthesis. In a headline, consider removing the phrase altogether, such as moving it to the body of the slide.

Of course the nature of slide shows means things are different than formal writing, but that doesn’t mean that an anything-goes approach really helps you communicate better.

Happy new year, present well

Hoping this post finds you well, and that you are looking forward to a new year.

For many of us in the modern working world, who are blessed with:

• Love of our family and friends
• Good health
• Freedom of expression and religion
• Lack of want or fear
  
• Steady employment
• Health insurance
• [insert the thing you’re thankful for here]

... the winter holidays bring some time off, and a chance to reflect on the past and consider the future. And so I ask you to reflect on the most important presentation that you made in 2009, and consider what you might change if you had a similar opportunity in 2010. What thing or things would you love to change, if you could? Would you:

• Research more?
• Prepare and practice more?
• Use less slides? Or more slides?
• Use more pictures and less words?
• Use real objects instead of pictures?
• Take the whole thing more and less seriously?
• Turn off the projector?
  
• Ask for help?

Whatever it may be, I hope 2010 brings better things for you and your loved ones.

Thanksgiving surprise from the Heath brothers

It’s been a while, sorry for the absence. I got a great surprise in my inbox a few days ago from Chip and Dan Heath:

Hi Jeffrey, congrats, you are going to be receiving a free advance copy of our next book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. We “drew” your name randomly (and you were fighting the odds, by the way – fewer than 1 in 3 people who signed up will get the book, due to limited quantities).

Expect to see it in 2-3 weeks – and certainly before the Christmas holidays. Just wanted to let you know it’s on the way!

We hope you enjoy it, and thanks for staying interested in our work.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Chip & Dan

I’m not some totally wired netizen or important reviewer, just a designer working to improve the way people and companies present themselves, so this really did come as a surprise. And so when I do get it, and read it, I’ll be sure to blog on any thoughts or related ideas. In the meantime I’d just like to say thanks to Chip and Dan.

On the experience. I’m not naive. I assume Chip and Dan didn’t personally select every name, and it may be that I was just on the right side of the 1 in 3 odds, but the experience still matters to me. And isn’t that the point? Think about that the next time you are taking your latest idea (or presentation) to someone – what will the experience feel like to them?

• Will it seem like you listened to their concerns, their needs, their POV, and responded with something that acknowledged and spoke directly to those issues?
• Or will it seem like you took your methodology, your approach, your terminology and added their logo?
  

Little things go a long way in effecting experience. The Heath brothers could have sent out a less personal email, it could have come from the publisher instead of them, they could have just sent the book with no email – but then my experience would have been different.