Designing Data Products - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 226

THINk LIkE A DESIGNER
By Ken Hilburn

Recently, Nancy Duarte participated in an interview with Jimmy Guterman
of the MIT Sloan Management Review, which resulted in the article “How to
Become a Better Manager by Thinking Like a Designer.” The quote that sum-
marizes the article follows:

Often managers . . . rely heavily on data and information to tell the story and
miss the opportunity to create context and meaning . . . leaving lots of room
for interpretation, which can spawn multiple cycles and limit advancement.

It's the same with information presentation. A focus on design at the beginning
expands the ability to deliver context and meaning. But before you discount
design as a concept for well, you know, “those artsy types,” keep in mind, as
Nancy puts it:

Design is . . . crafting communications to answer audience needs in the most
effective way.

What this means is that the more you focus on design, the more you'll “speak”
to your audience—which means you'll be more effective with your data pre-
sentation. Remember, it's about the audience, not you.

Here are some dashboard design principles that we use (with a few enhance-
ments from Nancy's interview) to make sure we become better information
presenters by thinking like designers:

unity/harmony —A sense that everything in the application belongs
together, resulting in a “whole” that is greater than the sum of the
parts. All the elements complement, augment, and enhance, as
opposed to distract and detract from each other.
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Takeaway —Identify the problem you're solving and make sure every
element you place moves you closer to answering that question.

Proximity/hierarchy —Things that are near each other are related.
Hierarchy demonstrates relationships between items where appropri-
ate. Proximity and hierarchy both provide tremendous contextual cues
leading to better understanding.
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Takeaway —Place related things near each other and separate unre-
lated things. Remember, dogs and cats don't play well together.