The Data Fluent Culture - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 154

are effective for the majority of data communication. Like simple
words, you can be assured that when your data products use these
simple forms your audience will quickly understand the message. It
is better to encourage your data producers to refrain from advanced
visualizations, like animated bubble charts, except in those rare occa-
sions when the breadth and nuance of your data requires more visual
sophistication. Even so, there is actual value in data producers becom-
ing familiar with advanced data visualization techniques. Just as a large
vocabulary offers an author more fodder with which to clearly com-
municate her message, advanced visualization techniques can offer
similar benefits to a data producer.

Remember that using too many words is a symptom of poor
understanding —Albert Einstein once said, “If you can't explain some-
thing simply, you don't understand it well.” The quickest way to lose
a meeting is to realize that the data presenter is thinking out loud. In
data presentation it seems especially tempting to think out loud by
showing all the data in every conceivable way. Unfortunately, we've
all been a recipient of the exhaustive 80-page PowerPoint report with
seemly infinite variations on the same data. Make sure that the expec-
tation is that authors of data products form an opinion and get to their
point immediately.

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Words are for communication, not show —The great English poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote, “Words in prose ought to express
the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a
fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing
the medium.” Far too many data presentations contain images that are
intended to draw attention to the visualization and not the message.
It's not about the data or the visualization; it's about the message that
the data presenter is trying to communicate. This is not simply a ques-
tion of efficient communication; it is also a question of perception.
When data products are unnecessarily complex or showy, they draw
attention to the wrong things. Figure 6-4 is an example of a chart that
is more about the chart than the message:

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