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We're infographic junkies here at Brain Traffic, and it's not hard to figure out why: Successful infographics are the marriage of great design and useful information. In other words, infographics are visually appealing content.
Converting your information to an infographic benefits your users by communicating your message in a visually compelling form. Whether they show up in internal deliverables or online, infographics seem to get everyone excited. Whenever I'm ready to create a new graphic, I use these resources for ideas and inspiration.
Great Lists from other sites
1. Smashing Magazine They've done several infographic round-up posts, but this is the one I keep going back to.
2. Six Revisions There's a strong consumption theme running through this collection. I've sent the coffee and beer graphics around to family and friends on more than one occasion.
3. Blog of Francesco Mugnai 50 great infographics. Nothing else.
Sites dedicated to Infographics
4. Flowing Data Great graphics and advice about how to create them. Props to Nathan Yau .
5. Chart Porn There's a humor category. (swoon)
6. Cool Infographics Lots of resources for creating graphics as well as examples. Check out the tips for designing infographics
7. We love Datavis The browsing on this one is not my favorite (the thumbnails are tough to decipher without clicking), but the graphics they pick are really strong.
8. How Toons Cartoons are not infographics in the traditional sense, but these are so entertaining I had to include this example.
Print Infographics
9. Feltron Annual Report Nicholas Felton does a report every year. It’s pretty amazing.
10. Good Magazine You know about Good, right? No? Just go there. Go there NOW.
Bonus – Interactive graphics!
I know I've already named 10, but I have to end with my all-time favorite interactive infographic. It's the New York Times Olympic Medal count – there's one for the Summer and Winter. They’re both so amazing, I love to go back to them even when it's not an Olympic year.
Posted in Content Strategy, Resources, Uncategorized, User Experience, Web Content
Do you really need that?
As an Information Architect and HUGE Martha Stewart fan, I have unrealistic expectations about how organized my house should be. I periodically take on projects to get sections of my house in order. I approach them similar to my work projects, with audit and analysis, followed by designing a solution and implementing the structure.
Early attempts at these projects would always stall in audit and analysis. I would come across the random things that just didn’t seem to go anywhere. Unable to find a home or at least some friends for said item would paralyze me into inaction.
But I’ve since found a solution that’s made my projects finish without fail… I get rid of it.
This doesn’t always work, but approaching a large organizational task by assuming that I will be getting rid of anything that is redundant or without a home clarifies the usefulness of the item and my emotions about it.
If I truly cannot part with it, then it needs a home. Usually that home is a highly prominent location that allows for organization based off of frequent use, like a utility drawer.
I’ve since transferred this process to wrangling source content. When I’m left with the stragglers that aren’t like anything else, I consider a series of questions:
"What will this information add to the experience?"
"What would be lost if this information went away?"
"Who would be affected if they look for this and can’t find it?
"By including this information, will it get in the way of more important information?"
If any or all of the answers to the above mean I need to keep it and there’s still no obvious home, perhaps I need to reconsider how I’ve organized things.
If I don’t need to keep it, then it’s simple. It just goes away.
Useful, usable website content is not about providing every single piece of information that anyone could ever think of, but instead focusing the information that people are most likely to want and use.
Getting rid of extra stuff clarifies your message and makes it easier for the majority of people to learn what they came there for.
So when you’re faced with leftover pieces of content start with "what if we got rid of it?" If you can answer that, the rest is much easier.
Posted in Content Strategy, Information Architecture, User Experience, Web Content
I’m currently seven months pregnant. Rather than developing nesting tendencies and actually cleaning my home, I have developed an addiction to reading craft blogs.
On many of these blogs, I’ve noticed the trend of labeling the comments section with something more customized than the standard "comments."
Here are a couple of examples:
It’s a great combination of being human and still being useful. This small change demonstrates an individual’s voice, but also clearly communicates the goal of the section.
I also thought it was a great example of how content (rather than design) can show brand and personality. These are blogs that are built on standard templates, but with this one little change, I suddenly felt a connection to a human on the other end.
Added bonus? People seemed to comment on these blogs more than the ones simply labeled "comments" or "leave a reply".
Many companies are locked into template designs that they feel constrained by, resulting in lamentations about being unable to add a lifestyle image or change a font. These projects are often time-consuming and expensive. Neither of those terms are popular, especially in the current economic climate.
So, when half of the room is screaming for a redesign while the other half is screaming back about time and budget, consider focusing on how the content can improve your site.
Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Content, Web Writing
I love this sign.
I pass by it every day on my way to work. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but this sign is huge. I’d guess it’s six or seven feet tall.
I love it because it communicates information that’s useful to me (store name and hours) in a manner that is conscious of how I will be reading the information (quickly, from a bus, bike, or car).
Everything works together. It has both good information and an easy- to-read design. It’s a good reminder to not forget the how and when, in addition to the what, when looking at content for your site.
Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Information Architecture, User Experience, Web Writing
Like many information architects, I come from a design background. That’s why I am very familiar with the tasks and process involved with design. While I have always worked closely with writers throughout my career, I have never been a writer myself.
I know that in past lives I have made a terrible assumption. Working at Brain Traffic I have seen daily proof that I am not the only person to make this mistake. And while I have seen the light, this assumption still runs rampant thorough the industry. I’m here to set the record straight.
Here it is … ready?
It’s the information architect’s job to find the source content.
Many information architects and designers try to draw a parallel between writing and design. Finding and selecting the colors, fonts, images, etc., is an engaging and exciting part of creating a great visual design. Searching for or creating the source imagery is why many designers get up everyday and go to work.
Conflicts often arise between information architects and designers when the interface is involved. It’s understandable, then, that the IA might assume that writers don’t want the IA to have anything to do with choosing the source content they’ll use to write a website. Wrong.
The writer loves it when an IA points out the relevant source content so he or she can read it, decipher it, and consolidate it into a clear and useful message. They want to focus on the tone and voice of the content. They want to turn nonsense into plain language, often on a tight timeline.
With all respect to the design process, locating source content for every single page of a site is much more time-intensive than finding source assets for representational pages of visual comps. And, digging into the source content is something that should never be skipped when you’re creating the architecture for a new site. From my experience, it’s the only way to plan for a great site that has meaningful content on all of its pages.
So, make sure you know what source content will be used for every page on your site and document it for your writer. Your writer will thank you for it. Trust me.
Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Information Architecture, Web Writing
I saw this sign during a recent trip to Midtown Global Market.
I liked it for the following reasons:
- It clearly communicated that there was still a play area but it had been moved.
- It helped me understand where I was in the market (northeast) and where I would need to go (southwest).
- The graphic gave me additional information (rather than acting as unnecessary decoration) and reinforced which direction I should go to find the play area.
- The design isn’t any fancier than it needs to be. It’s clear, simple, and readable from a distance.
There are only two improvements I could offer:
- Use sentence case to improve the readability.
- Change relocated to moved. Same message, only simpler.
Nice job, Midtown.
Posted in Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Writing
Sometimes I get bogged down in what can't be done on a project: limited technology, tight timelines, organizational challenges, etc. These things are frustrating. Frustrations are distracting. Distractions keep work from getting done.
Here's the deal—every project has limitations. That needs to be seen as a good thing. Limitations create problems. Solving problems equals successful experiences. Successful experiences equal happy businesses and users.
Include time early in your project process to uncover as many limits as you can. Missing a constraint can result in wasted time and work, creating additional limitations that you didn't anticipate.
Once you've identified all the pain points you can, decide what you're going to do with them.
Here are three options that will keep you and your team moving forward:
Accept the limits. Some things are what they are. Everyone has a budget. Legal reviews are non-negotiable. Immovable limits are a source of frustration for everyone, but repeatedly pointing them out has the unintended effect of lowering morale. Focus instead on what you can change.
Ignore the limits. I love the movie Clue for many reasons, one of which is the introduction of red herring into my vocabulary. Don't be distracted just because something is frustrating. Ask yourself: What would I do if it was different? Or gone? If there's no change to the final outcome, then ignore it and move on.
Challenge the limits. "Because I said so" was the bane of my childhood. I didn't accept it then, nor do I accept it now. Ask why not—and listen to the answers. Make sure something is actually a limit and not just a habit.
So, embrace your limits. If you need to, take a moment to complain to a sympathetic ear. But do it quickly and be done with it. And when it's all over, celebrate what you've overcome.
Posted in Information Architecture
I just finished watching the movie Gabriel.
It’s not good. I don’t recommend it.
I'll be honest, this is not the first bad movie I’ve seen. I wish I could redeem myself by blaming it on my husband, who put it in our Netflix queue. However, part of what drew us together 11 years ago was a shared appreciation for Hudson Hawk.
Turns out, though, that after extensive research, I've discovered this secret: Not all bad movies are bad.
Sometimes you get to the ending and the concepts reveal themselves to be thoughtful, although unsuccessful, attempts at telling a story.
This got me thinking.
As an Information Architect, I start every project with a current site audit. Now, while mocking a bad website provides great office fodder, it's safe to say that the site will nevertheless have good or interesting parts. Usually, it's typically an unsuccessful site experience because there are somehow barriers between the users and their goals.
Some of these barriers are similar to what makes a bad movie bad.
Bad Dialogue. Even 20 years ago, the theater audibly groaned at, ”Nobody puts Baby in a corner." But how often do you see web copy like, "We deliver a complete, pre-integrated technology foundation to reduce the cost and complexity of building and deploying enterprise business intelligence." Seriously. Groan. Talk like people talk and use plain language on your site.
Bad Editing. Ever get to the end of a movie and have no idea why the long lost cousin who liked to do magic tricks kept showing up? Scenes or characters that don’t advance the story need to be cut. Same thing on the web. Just because someone, somewhere might find the random detail interesting does not mean it's earned a place on the site. Ask yourself "Why would the user want to know this?" Do some research, decide who you're talking to and make some strong decisions based off that.
Bad Structure. 53 minutes in, it's the coolest sword fight of all time. (Oh, did I mention I like movies with sword fighting?) Too bad the past slow-going 52 minutes to get there just weren't worth where we arrived. I know there's an expectation that movies are a certain length, but there are no such rules for websites. Determine the importance of your information and make sure the structure of your site reflects that. When something needs to be told later, provide some really good hints to keep the interest going.
I'll wrap with a personal note to my IA colleagues out there. While writing this, I realized two things that affirm my career choice as an Information Architect. I figured you might appreciate them.
1. When I watch a bad movie, I think about how it could be restructured to tell a better story.
2. Watching bad movies reminds me that I enjoy digging through the junk to find the good bits.
Posted in Information Architecture, User Experience
The other day I posted Whitney Hess' article 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design on Twitter, along with "'User experience is not user interface design' and other good tidbits." And then I re-read the article … more than once. My response ended up being much longer than 140 characters.
Here's what I liked:
1. User experience is not user interface design. It's super important to go beyond how a site works. Too many companies jump ahead to 'So, what will that look like?' before they even figure out the why and how. They create meaningless goals like "build the brand" or "make it engaging" and people are too scared to say that doesn't mean anything. While I have some varying opinions on user research, here's an example of creating a good interface that solved the wrong problem.
2. User experience is not just about the user. When I heard Tamara Adlin speak a couple of years ago, she said "Without the business, there is no user." As we are likely to witness with many 2.0 companies, if you don't find a way to be profitable, your user experience won't matter much.
I think it's all too tempting to assume the "only I care for the user" mantle and take up the fight against the big, bad corporation. There's a continuing culture that seems to believe big companies are evil and make bad sites because they want to trick people. The truth, as I have experienced, is that it's more a sin of neglect than of malice. No one sets out to build a bad site. So many people responsible for these sites have way too much on their plate. They have internal and external pressures that lead to bad decisions that lead to bad sites (and so on, and so on).
Explaining why a site is bad could go on forever, but the bottom line is this: We get paid to help the companies that hire us to explain their value to their users.
3. User experience is not about technology. Within the UX field, there is a group that is pulling things deeper and deeper into the tech side. Whenever this happens, the usefulness of the web seems to slide backwards. From my humble observations, the web started out pretty shaky. Then terms like "usability" and "user experience" started being tossed around, and the web was on it's way to getting useful.
Enter 2.0. People were all dazzled by all the new toys and undid much of the progress. This is a gross generalization, but the trick of our field as we mature will be to incorporate the bright, shiny x.0 object while maintaining a focus on the basics. No matter what technology comes along, we should always remember that there is a person using it, and it's not the users fault.
4. I like the quotes.
"User experience design isn't a checkbox. You don't do it and then move on. It needs to be integrated into everything you do," Liz Danzico says.
"Interface is a component of user experience, but there's much more," Peter Merholz says.
5. Since everyone's name is linked, it's a good resource to find some super smart people and their blogs.
Here's what I think she missed:
1. There's no mention of Information Architecture, other than glossing over it under "User Experience is not a single discipline." Interface Design and Information Architecture are not the same thing. A good site can be built without an interaction designer (mentioned as a component of UX again and again), but not without good Information Architecture. She doesn't make a home for what role Information Architecture has within user experience in this article, and I think that's a huge miss.
2. "User experience is not the role of one person or department" should be "Making sure someone is caring about the user experience is everyone's role." I've heard a couple of other people make the same comment ("it's everyone's role") and I completely disagree. People want to be responsible for it (see #2 above), but caring about it isn't the same as getting it done. Everyone wants to take credit for when it's good, but there needs to be someone accountable for when it's not. This is a legitimate job with too many tasks to be shared across a variety of people who probably already have too much on their plate or other jobs to attend to.
3. There's no mention of content and how it fits into User Experience. It's a huge oversight. People want the content to be good, but they want someone else to make it that way. Too bad the users judge by what is said as much as how the site works. Which is why content needs a new home.
Posted in Information Architecture
While shopping for a Christmas present for my nephew, I came across the message to parents page on the ROBOTGALAXY site. I was surprised (and amused) to read the following:
Wow. This is live, right now.
Here’s another past placeholder faux pas from a Greenpeace press release:
Placeholder copy is just one symptom of a widespread epidemic: In so many website development projects, the lack of established process around content development allows that content to fall through the gaps in a million different ways.
Beyond effective content planning and creation, the entire site needs to be put through a QA process. Make sure someone reads the copy on every single page. If the copy isn’t important enough to be proofed, it isn’t important enough to be published.
Hire someone to do this if you don’t have the resources internally. If you contracted a writer to create your content, have him or her review it on the staging server before you launch the website.
If you’re trying to educate, influence, or inform, it’s important to not look like you just slapped some text up on a page. That’s no way to win trust or influence decisions. Users don’t care that you were on a deadline, and they don’t care that you can fix it later.
Posted in Web Writing
