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FreshSpectrum Information Design
Unhide your work. Unhide your voice.
Chapter 1: The BIG Why
Why are we still reporting like it’s 1999?
So back in 1999, if you wanted to share a report, you would either create an html version of the report or share a downloadable PDF.
Flash forward to 2025. Now if you want to share a report, most organizations will either create an html version of the report or share a downloadable PDF.
It’s almost as if the last couple of decades never happened. Let’s see what we’ve missed:
Social Media. For instance, Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist until the 2000s. In 1999, Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school.
Smart Phones and Flat Screen Monitors. The range of screen sizes you have in your home is incredibly wide compared to 1999.
UX Design as a Web Design Paradigm. User experience design predates 1999, but it did not have anywhere near the reputation it has nowadays.
Big Data and Easy Access Analytics. Google Analytics didn’t launch until 2005, lots of websites still had hit counters in 1999.
Easier to Use Reporting Tools. Back in 1999 you had Word and PowerPoint. Now we also have fun things like Canva and WordPress.
It’s not that the reporting approach from 1999 is bad. PDFs still might be the way to go, sometimes. But we can do better than just a long PDF on a resource site, we have the technology.
*Note from 2025 Chris: I’m working on a new book right now called, “The PDF Must Die.” Let’s just say, I have a less nuanced opinion these days about reporting with a PDF.
Our reports tell everyone else a story about our profession.
They tell everyone that our profession is stuck in the old days. We’re behind the times and out of touch.
Are they wrong?
In the first decade of the 2000s, the newspaper industry started a rapid decline. Newsrooms were closed, reporters lost their jobs, and business models were turned upside down. This collapse kicked off a transformation that is still ongoing.
But the market forces that toppled the newspaper industry didn’t topple the research and evaluation industry. We have never needed to rely on advertising and print circulation. While most of our money comes from public and nonprofit institutions, and many of us see our roles as serving the public good, our work rarely serves the public directly.
So we haven’t felt the same economic pressure to transform as other industries. We deliver what our funders expect us to deliver. We then leave the sharing to their communications teams and move on to new projects.
Our biggest reporting challenge is not rapidly changing technology but an established status quo that expects too little.
Seeing our work through our audience’s eyes.
When you ask an evaluation team to explain their report’s audience, what do they say?
Do they mention clients, program staff, other evaluators, other researchers, board members, teachers, program administrators, politicians, and the “general public?”
Eye roll.
It’s not that those are bad audiences to try to reach. It’s just that you can rarely reach any audience with just one PDF report. Most likely you are just writing that one report for yourselves and the people paying your bills. Somebody else might read it, but be honest, was it really written for them?
Nobody wakes up in the morning, gets a cup of coffee and thinks, “you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to scroll through an online archive of PDF evaluation reports.”
Think about the individuals in your audience. Every person has their own quirks and motivations. Pick one and look at your work through their eyes.
What do you see? If you were one of these people, would you even know your work exists?
If you do end up finding a report, how would you go about reading it? Would you sit down, open up your computer and read the PDF from start to finish? Or would you just skim your way through?
It’s not the quality of the one report that’s the problem. But our expectations that the one report serves all the people we would like to serve.
Unintentional gatekeepers.
Your work is interesting.
If it wasn’t, why would you or anybody else be doing it? Why would anybody put funding towards it?
The further we get into a topic, the more we lose sight of what made it interesting in the first place. We start to overthink it and decide that we need more time to share what we’ve learned. And then we spend a ton of time putting together our thoughts.
Eventually we end up with one longish report that gets shared very little.
We could make excuses and blame the audience. But were you there for them when they needed you? Maybe you have the specific answers to their questions but didn’t include them in the report.
The more we learn, the more we have to share. And if we don’t actively share what we’ve learned, we become gatekeepers.
Mindset Change – Report as a Product to Reporting as a Process.
It’s time to stop thinking about a report as a solitary thing. Instead of thinking about THE report. Part of the problem is that we treat a report like a product.
The product form of a report is annual or at the end of the project. It’s that one thing you deliver before you move on with your other work.
The process of reporting is an ongoing conversation you have with different audiences. It doesn’t have to be a PDF. You could report through a series of emails, blog posts, infographics, tweets, YouTube videos, or Zoom calls.
When you think of reporting as a process, it should change how you approach reporting in general. Since we are not focused on delivering one thing, the emphasis should be on ways that we can reach our audience on a regular basis.
This is what we miss when we treat our report like a product. It assumes that someone else is connected to the audience that wants or needs access to our work. It also assumes that the someone else is going to care enough about our work to share it with that audience. These are bad assumptions. Engagement is hard, and it’s even harder when sharing second hand data.
If we really want to effectively report our work, we need all the things that it takes to do that. Things like landing pages, email lists, featured images, and social media accounts. We also need to listen, not just shout.
Not just better, faster too.
Trying to improve the quality of your reports is a worthwhile pursuit. At first it might take you more time to create better work. You might even come to the conclusion that good things just take time. But it doesn’t have to take more time.
Most researchers and evaluators already spend a lot of time reporting, even when the reports are ugly and boring. The actual problem is that we spend a lot of time on inconsequential things.
We go back and forth wordsmithing phrases in paragraphs that will hardly ever be read. We spend time tweaking table formats in Word, even when the report is eventually going to be redesigned by somebody else. We write a hundred pages even when there is a 50 page limit.
Realistically, we are not going to be given more time to do better work. So we just need to create better work in less time.
Luckily there are ways to do that, by creating your own design systems, writing style guides, building asset libraries, and developing templates.
Because the thing that will make you and your work more valuable is being able to do better work in less time.
Make it easy.
Which is better, one amazing report OR ten pretty good reports?
Actually, let’s rephrase that. Which is better, reaching a small portion of your audience with one amazing report, while leaving the bulk of your audience with next to nothing OR reaching 10 different portions of your audience, each one with a pretty good report designed just for them?
If you only have one audience and plenty of time you can shoot for amazing. But for the rest of us, good enough is good enough.
It’s okay if the infographic is formulaic and built from a widely used template. It’s okay if that visual slidedoc only took you an afternoon to create. Your audience will not care.
So don’t overthink it.
Use the tools that are the easiest to learn. Create the way you know how to create. Make it as easy as possible.
Then repeat.
It’s up to you.
The status quo is powerful.
But if you want to take it down, you can take it down.
It might not be easy, but it is possible with a little hard work and a lot of dedication.