- [Instructor] There's an ongoing argument
that plays out in this corner of the universe
about the validity of using eye candy
to keep things interesting,
so we entertain as well as inform.
I fall clearly on the side that acknowledges
that as communicators we must entertain as well as inform.
But of course it goes without saying
that this entertainment can't come at the expense
of accuracy and truthfulness in our data communications.
For instance, you shouldn't pick fancy charts
because they're more interesting than a bar chart
unless they're also at least equally as accurate,
understandable, and clear.
But eye candy really serves three purposes.
Yes, the first one is to keep things interesting,
but equally as important, if not more so,
eye candy can serve to draw the eye to what's important.
Think of animation as being functional,
to make sure your audience notices the important stuff.
And not only do we draw the eye to what's important,
sometimes we can indicate with our eye candy
that something is not simply visual, but active.
For instance, a bouncing object can be a cue to an audience
that something is clickable.
These are really three good reasons
for adding a bit of eye candy,
that extra pizzazz to anything you create.
I can't emphasize enough that eye candy
has to be functional,
or at a minimum not detract from your functionality.
Data stories are best when they walk that line
very carefully.
They're best when they artfully combine information
and entertainment,
form and function.
Two of my favorite data visualization artists today
are Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec.
They both do really interesting work
and one of my favorite projects in recent years
is they collaborative that they called Dear Data.
Each week they sent each other postcards of data sketches
after tracking different variables in their lives
throughout the week.
They always took a different approach from each other
and each one is compelling and interesting and creative.
As is typical of their work,
the visual approaches are non-standard in many of the cases.
By the first definition, they're definitely eye candy,
because they're visually fresh and interesting.
As is sometimes the case with fresh and interesting visuals
your audience might need some hand holding to understand
what they're looking at and what it means.
In these cases you would need to know
it's worth your audiences' effort
to invest in learning a new way of reading their data.
If so, you've given them something
that's worth the investment
and that the payoff in terms of that artistic return
and or the data insight returned is worth that effort.
I think Giorgia and Stefanie
pulled that off with this project in most cases.
Often when I think about eye candy
it's the little things that can make a big difference.
Here's a project of mine that I did for the World Bank.
CGAP, the consultative group to assist the poor,
looks at financial services available to the poor,
and this one is looking at a survey done
with smallholder families.
Essentially, households that are agricultural producers,
farmers, in the countries of Mozambique,
Tanzania, and Pakistan.
And as you click through this experience
it's text, it's kind of like the one
that I showed earlier in the course, also for CGAP,
it's pretty straightforward,
it's just a few slides, it's text and images
and some simply visualizations.
And so in this case it's just a scatter plot
and the scatter plot is labeled,
so I know exactly what I'm looking at,
there's an audio to actually help you understand
more of what's going on,
but the point here is that as I click
on the different countries the dots light up.
And as you can see they animate
and they sort of come to life a little bit more
than just simply changing color.
This one's pretty straightforward in terms of eye candy.
The next one, this is looking at income streams,
and the reason I bring this one up
is essentially we're looking at
each line is a different stream of income,
so in other words they might have two different crops,
so two different sources of agricultural income,
and then a bunch of non-agricultural income.
Maybe they sell Cokes on the side of the road,
or maybe they work as laborers for other people's farms.
And when the audio plays in this experience
what happens is that as the audio hits certain points
in the narration track and starts to explain, for instance,
what's going on
it triggers activity,
it triggers actions within the interactive experience.
And so, for instance, as the narrator at the very beginning
is explaining, hey, each line is an income stream,
I'm just gonna trigger the event manually here,
this is what happens.
So it's a subtle animation
and I really like this one,
there's just something about it, that the timing of it,
it's sort of subtle, but it draws the eye,
rather than simply lighting up those streams
and then making them dark again,
there's a bit of a delay between each one.
These subtle effects really make a difference,
'cause they're sort of, the way they're timed
and then the way they take more time
than they might if it was just a simple on and off trigger,
allows the user to get used to the fact
that something is occurring.
Or another example,
this one is looking at the volatility of income.
And so on the y-axis we have the relative income
and on the x-axis is time.
And so again, as this particular visualization loads
it doesn't just all load immediately,
they animate on.
And there's sort of a slight delay
in terms of when they animate on,
so it gives the users the opportunity
to sort of see something's happening and wait for it,
and then once it's done, and it happens quickly,
you don't want them to wait for too long,
it gives an indication that these are live,
the fact that they animate on,
so that you know that you can roll over it
and something else is gonna happen.
And as I change countries, once again,
the whole thing comes to life on its own.
So this isn't super fancy stuff,
this is pretty straightforward,
but I take a lot of care on the projects that I work on
to make sure that the animations and the transitions
and the things are timed just very subtly and carefully
to again, draw the eye,
let people know that something is active,
and to make things more visually interesting.
Don't let anyone tell you eye candy is unimportant.
As long as our attention spans continue to shrink
and the competition for your audience's attention
gets fiercer
eye candy will be more and more critical
to communicating anything.
Make sure that whatever eye candy you employ
serves your audience and adds to the value
of what you're communicating.
Never undermine your quality and accuracy
in exchange for the eye candy,
but at the same time you should never be satisfied
with a stale, boring old bar chart
if a more lively and animated
and visual approach is available.