Infographics

Infographic Shminfographic, just create a slidedoc.

As someone who has at many different points in his career created infographics, I don’t really like them.

And I get why most people who are used to writing reports also dislike them. I mean sure, the medium is printable, downloadable, and tweetable, but so much of the time it’s all sizzle no steak.

And then, you can’t just create an infographic. You have to create a string of infographics, and maybe a few briefs, a couple of one pagers, a shortish report, and then maybe something embeddable or mobile responsive.

Now all of a sudden our report writers are managing a digital/print production and distribution company.

Slidedocs though.

Slidedocs are cool.

If you’ve never heard of them, they’re like presentations you can read.

You just use Power Point, Google Slides, or Canva to create.

You can print it, embed it, tweet it, it can be long, it can be super short, it can be visual heavy, visual light, you can adapt it easily into a presentation, you can even add voice and turn it into a video, and really you can use it for just about any sort of reporting purpose.

Want to learn more? I’ll be sharing some templates for you in the upcoming weeks. But for the time being, head over to Nancy Duarte’s site to read her slide doc on creating slide docs.

Serve up Survey Data with a Menu Infographic

Chris Lysy

During this week’s Thursday discussions over at diydatadesign we’ll be talking about different strategies for visualizing survey data. Preparing for that call inspired this post.

The Problem

Surveys are not setup in a narrative format. So after the results roll in and it’s time to sit down in a meeting to go over the results, you could be in for a long and boring meeting.

This is not exactly aided by the set after set of auto-generated pie charts your online survey program produces and calls a report.

But let’s step back a little.

The problem is the usual one. We ask for all sorts of information in a survey. Usually more than we can digest at any single point in time, not to mention that some of the data is going to take a bit of analysis before it makes sense.

The Challenge

Can we make survey data digestible and discussion ready so that we can have meaningful discussions.

I find that infographics work really well for this type of challenge.

Go ahead and print out the full auto-generated visual report from your survey program. But instead of trying to change and adapt that report, create something new. In this way the infographic becomes a pathway between the full set of findings and the audience.

One Solution: Menu it

One way to create a fresh style of infographic is to take something visually familiar to most people that exists in a different context and apply that to your work.

Here’s an example.

Canva has a lot of food/drink menu templates. Menus are incredibly familiar and metaphorically perfect for serving up data.

Just pick a template based on how many questions (the menu item) you want to highlight. Write a quick little summary for each (your menu item description). And then in place of the price, put the page number.

A breakfast menu might be perfect for quick meetings.

Or if you have a little more to go over, put it in a dinner menu. These bigger menus also give you a way to group similar questions.

Try it out and share!

If you take this approach, please share what you come up with. You can drop a comment below or send me a tweet (@clysy).

Why you should create a minimum viable visual

Chris Lysy

Tiny infographic cartoon by Chris Lysy
The infographic was not going to be a finalist in any design competition. The font was tiny. The few colors just didn’t seem to gel. It was printed small with strange dimensions.

Definitely not going to find this one on any blogger’s top 100 list.

But that’s out of context. Listening to the evaluator talk about the infographic tells a completely different story. This infographic was greeted with praise by their client, who loved it so much that the simple visual report outgrew its original purpose and became one of their key handouts for the following year.

And now the evaluator gets to share her success with colleagues. Each one furiously copying down the instructions so that they can go home and try it out with their own clients.

Oh, and did I mention that the infographic was based off a free web template? And that nothing about the final product was different from the original, right down to the flawed export approach that made it low resolution and forced it to be printed small.

Even with its flaws, this is the very definition of a quick win.

Responding to an audience’s visual appetite

Responding to a visual appetite cartoon by Chris Lysy
When an audience shows a visual appetite, there are lots of ways to respond. But it’s easy to fall into an all or nothing mentality.

“Well clearly our audience wants visuals, so we need to make a major investment in professional development and software. We’ll get there, but for now, just hold tight.”

Think about a crowded park filled with hungry people. One way to respond is to consider building a restaurant nearby. There is a lot of prep work to be done, but with all of those hungry people the restaurant would do well.

Or you could buy a hot dog cart and start selling much sooner, responding to the need.

The restaurant isn’t a bad idea, it’s probably a great one. But investments take time, especially major ones.

Minimum Viable Visual

Easy infographic favorite part cartoon by Chris Lysy
Businesses like to talk about minimum viable products. These are products with low risk but offer the potential of a high return. Lots of times they’re bare bone versions of a product put out to test a concept.

We can do the same thing with visuals. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. See how your audience responds, this will help you decide if you should make a major investment.

My coming soon course is going to be filled with recipes for minimum viable visuals. Step by step directions you can follow to create something that you can use right away, not years from now.