The Adnostic

Part 1

Analytical Design Principles
- Turning fundamental cognitive tasks into design principles and practices to assist thinking about the information
1) Compare data, show comparisons
2) Show mechanism, causality, dynamics
-- Casual thinking is unnecessary
3) Show more than one or two variables
4) Completely integrate words, numbers, and graphics (it's cell data)
-- Tell the entire story with the graphic
-- No bureaucracy of information
-- Design should explain content
5) Document everything and tell people about it
-- Establish credibility
6) Design is an agency to content
-- Serious presentations stand or fall depending on the quality of the content (relevance, integrity)
-- Boring numbers -> get better numbers, do NOT over-design
7) Try to show information as long as possible adjacent in space
-- Not stacked in time (flip, flip, flip)
-- No such thing as too much information for the human eye
-- Start with the hardware and what the user sees and then think about software.
-- Begin with content.
-- "Visible certainty liberates us from wordy arguments." ~ Galileo

8) Use small multiples
-- A small canvas on which to paint the information
-- A steady field to show content variation
-- Mastery of detail generates credibility
9) Take graphics and tables as seriously as we take our words on the universal grid
-- Put everything in context
-- Detail brings context, not clutter
-- To clarify, add detail. It shows relation.

The single biggest threat to learning the truth from a presentation is "cherry picking" data.

Lumpy graphics are better than spiky graphics
- You can see patterns in the data better