Here’s a good German interview with an Italian information graphic designer. He’s the art director for IL- Intelligence in Lifestyle and has received many awards for his work, linked below for your perusal.
Francesco Franchi: On Visual Storytelling and New Languages in Journalism from Gestalten on Vimeo.
Link to additional work by Francesco.
Even though I can't read Italian, I'm really drawn to these images
When asked to proofread something again and again, eventually we stop seeing what we already believe to be there. In other words, the very obvious mistake can hide in plain sight and come back to haunt us. We’ve all been there!
A recent and humorous example caught my attention last week, when the Vermont police were found to be driving squad cars with a hidden epithet. Prison inmates make the decals affixed to up to 30 patrol cars, and they had hidden a pig in the artwork files without anyone noticing. You can probably spot it quicker than the police who look at the decals everyday.
"Spot" the piggy
Personally, I think the pig is a lot cuter than the three strange animals to the left. What the heck are those things supposed to be?
Source: Vermont inmates slip pig into police car decal
Research from Dartmouth and Georgia State suggests graphs are more likely to change stubborn minds than text alone. The research looked into why, when the facts prove reality, people will still reject the truth when it differs from their tightly held beliefs. Can graphs help change their minds? Yes!
The editor at Fast Company goes on to suggest that if you are willing to lie and represent a falsehood visually people will believe that as well. True, but not the intent of the originally researchers. Below is one of their experimental charts and the results of sharing it with a given audience.
Is the trend going up or not?
Graphs are more likely than text to change the minds of people with strong beliefs.
Fast Company: Infographics can save morons from themselves.
Here’s the research conclusion below, and the original paper.
Conclusion
This paper makes two principal contributions to research on motivated reasoning and political misperceptions. First, we show that affirming self-worth can reduce misperceptions among respondents who are most likely to resist acknowledging uncomfortable facts about an issue. Second, we show that it is possible to provide subjects with graphical information that improves the accuracy of their factual beliefs. These results help us understand why individuals resist discordant claims and the means by which they do so.
These results have differing normative implications. On the one hand, they highlight the exciting possibility that graphical corrections can reduce misperceptions more effectively than text. However, the results underscore the psychological factors that make misperceptions so difficult to reduce. Among motivated subgroups, receiving the affirmation treatment (but not any corrective information) leads to better performance on factual questions across three studies. This result suggests that many of these respondents know the correct answers but were unwilling or unable to acknowledge that fact if they were not affirmed. In other words, self-affirmation may be important not because it makes people more open to new information, but because it allows them to accept dissonant information they already possess but would otherwise reject. These effects were largest relative to the effect of the graph treatment in our Iraq experiment
(Study 1) but were also significant in our studies of perceptions about job growth under President Obama (Study 2) and global temperature change (Study 3).
I really enjoy these summaries with links to the actual presentations on various subjects. It’s possible to get new ideas from seeing what’s been successful for other industries and topics. The interactive blend of data and visualization is truly imaginative and inspiring.
Fast Company’s Top Information Graphics 2011
Mapping travel to time
It seems I’m asked this question with some frequency, so I was happy to find the study results. Here are a couple simple information graphics with some surprising revelations. Am I the only one polishing Microsoft products for clients?
From Best Vendor
Here are some additional “secret apps”…
Best Vendor
I happened upon this the other day and thought to share it. Nicely done, no fuss:
The International Association of Business Communicators recently invited me to speak on the subject of visual communications. I’m pleased to share the slides I shared that addressed some of the science behind visual thinking, applications to business, and some examples.
For more information, please feel free to contact me. mark@visualtranslations.com
LinkedIn profile
Best Wishes,
Mark
I found this interesting site that helps viewers diagnose and determine whether they should try and repair their own appliances or replace them. The promise is that if you help people avoid trashing appliances by confidently finding a part and installing it your helping someone sell parts, helping the planet avoid waste, while of course helping the owner save money.
Sounds like another triple bottom line model with information graphics leading the charge. Here’s the link to play with the rollover diagnosis. Obviously, they have a lot of missing information, like the “F1″ code that shows up on the dash of my stove when it overheats and shuts down.
Source: PartSelect Appliance Parts
http://bit.ly/rMVZb6
Mark Allen, founder of Visual Translations, presents “See What You Mean: Using Visuals to Move Audiences.” How do companies use – or misuse – visuals? What makes a good visual story? Why are some presentations more effective than others?
