Edward Tufte is a statistician and considered an expert on presenting data visually. Tufte was highly recommended, so I decided to attend his 1-day course in Minneapolis. Part of the event cost included four of Tufte’s books as hardcovers.
Tufte presented to a room of hundreds the day I attended, and there was another day scheduled with hundreds more! I enjoyed the course and met him briefly at the end to get a book autographed.
My notes:
- presentations should be problem-driven, use “whatever it takes” to show data
- annotate nouns (in handouts)
- provide “reasons to believe”
- alternative explanations “must compete”
- put nouns into context
- find the “supergraphic” of your field
- celebrate the fact that viewers of the handout accompanying your presentation are reading ahead
- “information overload is a failure of design”
- “genuine interaction” means evoking different memories for each user
- bring something for your presentation that’s “real” (hospital bill example), note: “real means tangible”
- order by performance, not alphabetically, when you find the “performance data”
- don’t design to the lowest common denominator
- gill sans font for tables, 1-pg. 750 words
- provoke interest and curiosity beyond the moment
- Nature magazine was used as an example of great design, it has dense high quality information
- work hard on performance data (performance data is most important)
- “tone deaf” to the audience
- get information adjacent in space, not “stacked in time”
- don’t use “flatland” to describe high-dimensional problems
- what’s the rate of information throughput?
- “improvements in resolution”
- “direct labeling”–eliminate legends and codes etc. from chart elements as much as possible
- bring a real 3-dimensional object to your presentation, escape flatland
- don’t segregate information by the “mode of production”
- “compared with what”, grand comparisons
- deep knowledge and caring about the content
- “design cannot rescue failed content” (content is most important)
- “do no harm” to content (note: presentation should not harm content)
- do things adjacent in space
- use small multiples (natural comparisons), easy on the viewer
- take advantage of viewer’s investment in learning the format
- avoid “de-quantification”
- “chartoonist” (sic) (note: derogatory term for charts that look like cartoons)
- PowerPoint presentations are a “dominance relationship”, the “dreaded slow reveal” (note: advocates having handouts and encouraging users to read ahead, not conform to presenter’s slide reveal speed)
- turning cognitive tasks into design principles
- principles help to be a smarter consumer
- “interface indifference”
- screen + paper, more cooperation, interface neutrality, “whatever it takes”
- 90% of the screen has content, information throughput
- “we don’t have to attract them, they’ve already arrived.”
- avoid bureaucracy of organization in design “conway’s law”
- “outside-in” design
- “solutions looking for a problem to solve”
- insist on high resolution from the start
- administrative debris
- word-size graphics (note: these are sparklines)
- typographic resolution not cartoon resolution
- sparklines: part of text, not separate
- too much weight to recency, “recency bias”, sparklines do not emphasize recency, shows more data
- design driven by cognitive task, choose graph resolution appropriate to problem
- wave fields (note: new chart style Tufte is experimenting with)
- PowerPoint “projector operating system”, 50-250 slides fit on A3/11x17, begin with a serious summary
- problem (issue)
- why do I care (relevance)
- solution
- 4-page handout, note: one sheet, double-side printed, folded
- people talk 140-150 words per minute, attendees can read faster than that!
- “high resolution data dump”, 12 professors reading information-dense handouts
- sentences have “causal agency”
- get better content!
- rehearse your presentation, listen to video and audio
- room setup: try to get control, let audience see gestures
- in a long room? stand on the broad side, more of the audience is engaged
- ask a colleague to ask questions as an audience member, get the audience rolling
- “mastering the techniques of teaching” - show up early!
- see how long you can stay out of first person singular
- finish early!
I enjoyed the Tufte set of talks and recommend seeing him if you get the chance!
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