Information Underload

When Engine’s Mark Pack tweeted about this fantastic infographic about infographics, I found it quite thought provoking.

We’ve seen a huge number of infographics over the past 6-12 months, no doubt in part thanks to Wordle, Information Is Beautiful and the Guardian.

Infographics unquestionably present information in an easy to understand way and some of them are visually quite beautiful.

However, when you work in the kind of environment that I work in, having an overview of the data to hand isn’t always enough – it’s just as important to know how you can truly draw meaning from it. And it’s here that the value of most infographics is severely diminished.

For me, the ideal infographic would present the topline information in a clean, clear and concise way, whilst having an element of interactivity built in that would allow you to drill deeper and deeper into a specific fact or figure.

Take a pie-chart showing the average Briton’s media consumption as an example. When I click on the portion that denotes newspapers, I want to see what that breaks down into for each paper. When I click on TV, I want to see how consumption breaks down per channel, and when I click on a channel, I want it to show peak viewing hours and/or the most popular programmes.

It’s THIS information that is truly useful. I can’t make decisions, or recommendations for my clients, based on topline data. I need to know, as Rudyard Kipling so aptly put it, “What and why and how and who”.

So does this suggest the end of the infographic? I hope not, as some are truly beautiful and eminently easy to digest but developing them to provide a further level of interaction could save them from reaching their zenith prematurely. Does it mean I wouldn’t use one? No, but I’d think twice before I did!