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FreshSpectrum Information Design
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Chapter 4: Leading the Change
The HiPPO Problem
If you have ever written or designed anything for a client or a boss, you have likely run into the HiPPO problem.
What is the HiPPO problem you ask?
HiPPO – Acronym
Highest
Paid
Person’s
Opinion
Far too many individuals and organizations let the HiPPO play a key role in their design process. Not intentionally, more because they lack any kind of systematic decision making process. So the person with the biggest paycheck ends up calling the shots.
The problem is that the person who makes the most money…
is not likely the person with the most design expertise.
is not likely the person who knows the most about the target audience.
is not likely heavily involved in most of the initial decision making process.
This isn’t to say that your boss’ opinion or your client’s opinion should not matter. It’s just that it shouldn’t be the driving force behind your design process.
The easiest way to reduce the HiPPO problem is by establishing a design process that externalizes some of the decisions and leverages design assets.
Activity: Finding the HiPPO
Before moving forward, it’s a good idea to identify the HiPPOs in your organization. Potential HiPPOs might come from your boss, your client, your boss’ boss, or a high paid consultant. The HiPPO might even be your opinion.
We can find the potential HiPPOs with a simple question.
Who in your organization has the power to kill or upend your project with a glance and a word?
For example if this person said, “I don’t like this color,” you would need to change all the colors. Or perhaps they said, “I don’t like scatter plots,” and you would be scrambling to change that scatter plot to something else.
Write down the list of people who have that level of authority. These are people you need to factor into your design process.
Developing your Design Process
I have a basic 5 step design process that I like to follow for everything from infographics to websites to long reports. These steps are set up to be iterative and you can user test or solicit feedback in between each step.
Step 1. Design Brief: Before you design, write a few sentences about what you hope to design. What is your overall design challenge? What would you consider a successful design?
Step 2. Audience Personas: Who are you designing for? Real people have quirks, so create a few basic profiles of individual audience members. They should be somewhat representative of your target audience. Give them descriptive names (Sally the Project Officer, Dwayne the Board Member, Daria the Volunteer, etc.). Now ask what would each one need or expect from your design? What questions would they ask? Would they even read your report? Which of the big three audiences do they belong to?
Step 3. Mood board: A mood board is useful for laying out your overall vision. In this step you want to collect all the materials you need to create your design including fonts, logos, and colors. You can also include concept sketches, inspirational examples, and any templates or assets you might plan on using.
Step 4. Prototype: A prototype is where you show that you can pull off your vision. It could just be a first draft, or it could be a partial draft showing how the design would look using real software tools. The prototype should be tangible and give any internal partners a practical example of what you had in mind.
Step 5. Final Product: The final product is the goal. It’s always possible you will need a few iterations and copy editing passes before you get to the true final product. But hopefully the other pieces of the design process will make this part go faster.
Reducing HiPPO Problems
To reduce potential HiPPO problems try to get your decision makers involved with the design early in the process.
If you can get sign-off on the design brief there is less of a chance that your HiPPOs will significantly alter the project scope later in the process.
Audience personas can help change the internal conversation. It should never be your opinion versus the HiPPO, unless you are the HiPPO that’s an argument you will almost always lose. The persona can help you to shift attention away from opinions towards individual audience member needs.
One of the reasons to use mood boards is to get feedback on visual and technical direction before putting work into the design. This step can also save you from last minute color or font change requests.
The faster that you can create a prototype the better. Our imaginations hardly ever perfectly align and some people will need to see something tangible before understanding your vision.
It is much easier to make big sweeping changes to your designs early in the process, before you have written/coded/formatted everything. If you keep your potential HiPPOs in the loop throughout there is less of a chance that their comments will require a redesign.
The Status Quo Problem.
“It is what it is…”
I hate that phrase. There are processes and protocols that are tough to change, especially in big bureaucratic government, NGO, and nonprofit organizations. But most things can be changed. And not changing them is a choice.
“This is the way it’s always been done,” is just another form of “it is what it is.” It’s an excuse we use because it’s almost always easier to stick to the status quo. But easier is definitely not always better.
The people who run up against the status quo problem are the kind of people who would read a book titled, “The Reporting Revolution.”
Change is hard to bring, and it can take some time. But here is a quick approach you can use to introduce creative work in status quo following organizations. It’s called double delivering.
The Power of Double Delivering
Double delivering is just what it sounds like. Instead of delivering one version of a design, you deliver two. For the first you create something basic (i.e. the status quo way). For the second, you try something creative.
I know it sounds like extra work (and it probably will be extra work) but if you really want to push creative boundaries inside of conservative organizations, a little bit of extra work is almost a necessity. And even if you have support to try something new, I still suggest you create two options.
If you bring a new design to your boss and ask if they like it, they might say yes or they might say no. If no, you go back and redesign, then you bring it back to your boss for another thumbs up, thumbs down conversation. This can turn into an endless feedback cycle and get really annoying, it can also cause you to miss deadlines.
When you offer two alternatives you change the conversation because which one do you prefer is a very different question. It forces a choice. They might go for the boring version or the creative version. But they are far less likely to send you all the way back to the drawing board.
Choosing your Reporting Software Stack
Your reporting needs will NEVER be solved with just one tool. Regardless of any promises made to you by software companies. In the IT world technical needs are often met with a software stack, not a single tool. It’s best to think of your reporting needs in that same way.
This is not to stop you from experimenting with different tools, but it’s good to have an idea of your usual reporting software stack. Let’s first look at traditional reporting software.
What software tool do you use…
to analyze your data? (i.e. SPSS, SAS, R, Google Sheets, and Excel)
to create your charts? (i.e. Excel, Google Sheets, PowerPoint, R, and Adobe Illustrator)
to write your reports? (i.e. Word, Google Docs, and Pages)
to design your reports? (i.e. Publisher and InDesign)
to create your slide decks? (i.e. PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides)
to develop your data dashboards? (i.e. Tableau, PowerBI, and Google Data Studio)
Many organizations leave the choices up to individuals and teams. I think that is a good idea, but when planning out potential templates and training guides, having specific suggested software can be incredibly helpful.
Your Modern Reporting Software Stack
Now let’s look at some of your modern reporting software. What software tool do you use…
to develop websites? (i.e. WordPress, Drupal, SquareSpace, and Wix)
to create social media featured images? (i.e. Canva and PowerPoint)
to capture screen recordings? (i.e. Loom, Descript, Windows Game Bar, and QuickTime)
to deliver webinars? (i.e. Zoom, GoToMeeting, YouTube Live, and Microsoft Teams)
to produce explainer videos? (i.e. Canva, PowToon, and Vyond)
to edit video? (i.e. Adobe Premiere, iMovie, Camtasia, and Screenflow)
to monitor social media? (i.e. Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social)
to deliver email newsletters? (i.e. MailChimp, ConstantContact, and Convertkit)
to build an online community? (i.e Circle, BuddyPress, Slack, and Discord)
to develop interactive charts? (i.e. Flourish, Datawrapper, and Tableau)
to develop eLearning modules? (i.e. Teachable, Thinkific, WordPress, and Articulate 360)
In each of the above examples I only offered a few examples of common software, there are many more tools to choose from. There are also other areas I did not cover.
Even though it might be overwhelming, remember, it’s always better to think through the options when you have the time rather than right before the project deadline.
Creating a Simple Style Guide
Not only can a style guide help you to “stay on brand” it can also reduce some of the decision burden you face later in the reporting process.
One of the lessons I have learned time and time again is that even if a group is not tied to any specific branding guidelines, it is worth the time and effort to create a simple style guide. The last thing you want to do with a quickly approaching deadline is have a conversation about colors, fonts, and logos.
At the bare minimum, here is what you should include in your simple style guide.
All relevant logo files needed for inclusion in your report.
A basic color palette.
Fonts for headings, subheadings, and body text.
Try to create your style guide as early as possible. It can take time to get the relevant logo files and updated branding guidance when it exists. Early is also the time to decide on colors and fonts.
Report Writing, Report Design, and Report Illustration are Three Different Steps
One thing that slows down report writing is the feeling that you need to design and illustrate your report as you write your report. Countless hours get wasted by data people reformatting tables or assembling figures in Word only to have those tables and figures scrapped later and redesigned using other tools.
I am someone who regularly writes, designs, and illustrates reports for a living. But I do not do all three tasks at the same time. Here is my usual process.
I write in a Google Doc. The only formatting I do during the writing stage is to apply heading styles. My report writing process usually starts with just an outline of basic headings covering all the information I plan to include in my report. Then I write underneath each individual heading.
Lately I spend most of my time designing reports using Canva. I will often build a report shell in tandem with the Google Doc. Most of the time a report can be designed before it is written by using placeholder text. The design step can also help to inform your writing by giving you target word counts based on the placeholder text for each section of the report. You can also use placeholder images for future illustration.
The illustration step happens in tandem with the writing or following the writing. Some illustrations, such as stock images, can be used to set a tone or provide spacing for the words to do their work. Other illustrations, like charts, figures, drawings, and photographs, can become critically important features that can sometimes tell the story of your work better than the words. These types of illustrations might also influence the writing.
It’s only after the words are all written, the report template is approved, and the illustrations are reviewed that I bring everything together into a single report.
Developing an Asset Library
Building a personal asset library can help you create reports faster. Modern visual reports of any style use a lot of images from stock photos to icons. Your library doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it could just be a folder on your personal desktop, on a shared server, or in a repository like Dropbox.
Just like any other asset, digital assets are accumulated over time. Your job is to be on the lookout for things that could be useful for future reports. Here are some of the things I would include in your asset library.
Charts and Graphs: If you create a chart you like, save a copy of the file where you created the chart. Then name the file according to the assets you have inside. So if you created a really nice stacked bar chart in Excel, save the file inside your library as “Stacked Bar Chart,” this will make it far easier to search for in the future. If you used private data, intentionally corrupt and de-identify the data before saving it into your asset library.
Icons: There are lots of good and inexpensive royalty free icon libraries on the web. A lot of the icons we choose are really specific to the context of our work and our sense of style. Just because you found an icon once doesn’t mean you’ll find it again, so save the icons you use into your asset library. Just make sure to check the site you downloaded them from to ensure that reuse is still within your rights.
Photos: Stock photos can be really useful, just follow the same advice as I gave with the Icons. But most of the time you also have a really powerful camera in your pocket, use it. You may not be able to take photographs of people for privacy reasons, but you can still take pictures of related objects and locations. Also keep an eye out for relevant photographs taken by others.
Example Reports: So far I have mentioned usable assets, but keeping an inspiration folder is also a good idea. If you really liked the style of someone else’s report, save it to your inspiration folder. Sometimes inspiration will be a website or link. In those situations I suggest taking a screenshot and saving it inside a document with a direct link back to the website.
Building out Templates
Many modern design software products are anchored by a large library of design templates. The templates become the first thing you see when you open up the program. In older software, templates were more of an afterthought. The idea being that you want to start with a blank slate.
The reason for the shift is simple. Templates make design faster, as tweaking a template to make it your own is much easier than starting from scratch. They can also result in better design, as a lot of the design questions have already been answered by someone with ample design experience.
With design tools like Canva and Flourish, you can also save any design as a template link that someone else can click on and use. But you can also create a template in any program by just saving a copy of a file and putting it into a template folder. I realize that many tools have specialty template file types but I often find them a little clunky and just prefer having a copy of the original file.
When intentionally building out templates, use placeholder text, placeholder images, and placeholder charts. The placeholder content should be easy to spot in a simple copy edit so it does not accidentally end up in a published version of a report.