Information at a Glance: Quick. Confusion or Clarity?
August 10, 2013
I am not much of an interface person. You can see from the design of Beyond Search. There is a feature which we update once a week or so. There are daily summaries of articles I find interesting and wish to keep in a database. I use the research in my for-fee articles and other writings like my upcoming story for Homeland Security Today about “Cadillac tail fins.” I will explain the metaphor when the story runs next week (August 12 or 13, 2013).
I read a review of Information Dashboard Design, second edition. If you are into user experience or user interfaces, you will want to read the book. I will definitely check it out.
I just wanted to point out that the image from the blog is an example of a “solution” by the book’s author, Stephen Few.
Image source: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1466
I find these types of extremely dense, complicated outputs interesting, not because I use them.
Check out my approach to tabular data. I stick with print outs, usually of chunks of Excel spreadsheets or short write ups with bullets and data in short tables like this one:
From the forthcoming monograph Google 20/20: A Prescription for New Revenue, which discusses the trajectory of Google Glass. The author is the Harrod’s Creek recluse, Stephen E Arnold.
If I need to show a point, I use a graphic like a stop light or maybe a thermometer.
The reason for my utter simplicity of approach is that I find the dense, busy, modern UX/UI presentations darned hard to figure out. If a person is under time pressure or does not know exactly what he/she is looking at, the likelihood of dismissing or misinterpreting data strikes me as high. Under pressure, absolute clarity and brevity are required. Fluff is okay in a personal blog, but not when money or lives are on the line.
Now in many vendors’ eyes, training is available online. Even better, a three minute YouTube video will explain “everything” the user needs to know. (Frankly categorical affirmatives about “users” is a questionable assertion.) The idea that an analyst is standing by to help the end user has disappeared like five cent Mars bars.
Net net.
Fancy interfaces do not replace a subject matter expert, an analyst, and a professional working through what the data will permit and how best to present answers to specific questions. Some interfaces are pretty much guaranteed to increase risk and go unused.
Step
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