Title: Designing with Science
Context: Don’t blind people with science when you can empower them with context.
Synopsis: The ostensible topic of this article is Facebook ads (yawn), but the subtext of finding the best way to present large and complex data sets for multiple user types is much more compelling. Everyone thinks they want data, no, need data! but once they are confronted with the impenetrable facade of math (yikes) they tend to take their numb brain and bleeding eyes elsewhere. Numbers are, apparently, the cause of—and solution to—all of data’s problems. The information they convey is the real draw and many people, no matter how you choose to visualize the raw numbers, still get brain lock at first glance. So how do you make everyone happy and better informed without dumbing down for the number savants or overwhelming the math phobic? Turns out masking complexity isn’t the problem that needs solving, rather clarifying complexity is the task at hand. Don’t drop anyone in the deep end without a life-preserver essentially. Giving people numbers is all well and good, but explaining what those numbers mean in the first place contextualizes the visualization so that even the most arithmetically challenged among us can find the story contained therein.
Best Bit: “Telling the story required some inventive design, we somehow had to figure out a way to ship the science — to deliver a product that communicated a scientific methodology in a simple, meaningful way.”
via medium.com
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