Soda bread vs. pizza?

For example, one of the most overwhelming impressions I get, albeit almost entirely from films and television and mostly gangster movies at that, is that Irish and Italian heritage are particularly common in the USA. Am I right? No. But see for yourself:

Irish and Italian origin in the USA — from bloomberg.com

Does this visualisation bear out any of your preconceptions about American heritage?

• More on plain language?
• More government consultations?
• More on information design?
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Reviews
• Criticism
• Something else even more exciting?

I’d love to know what you like best about this blog, and what you’d change.

Now, leaving aside the salient political point that we may not have an NHS relatively soon, I’m wondering what it’s going to be like to go to a hack day as a designer / user-experience type, rather than a coder or developer. What value can I bring? As a designer will I be expected merely to Make Things Pretty? Because I’m much more in favour of making things useful.

I want to:

• Collect stories
  Are you a healthcare professional or a recent patient? Can you give me an account of a recent day in the office / ward / surgery?
• Identify sticking points
  If you’re one of the above and you’ve come up against barriers in your job or in the service you’ve had — whether it’s little ones you’ve pushed through, or big ones you’re constantly pushing against — please tell me!
• Identify how current technology could be improved
  Could existing systems be made better, or put in better places?
• Find the right tools for the job
  Are tablets and smart phones the right way to go? Money, hygiene, opportunities for use all have to be looked at. Would voice activated systems be better or worse? In a clinical or emergency environment, how does technology usage change?

If you can help or know healthcare professionals who’d be interested in getting involved, please pass this post on.

The challenge was a little out of my comfort zone — I much prefer illustrating social concerns, things which make a difference to our understanding of the world. We were given a massive spreadsheet of hollywood industry  data — profits, losses, genres, etc and asked to tell a visual story. This was mine. Tell me what you think.

Top films of the last 5 years by rating and profitability

To others it’s a collection of design disciplines, with a little psychology mixed in. Wayshowing, instructional graphics, user experience design for web or print, products, packaging, typography.

My personal definition is very broad, possibly broader than many information design professionals would feel comfortable with. It is my firm believe that pretty much anything, yes anything, can be information designed. I’m even closing in on a definition that almost says that nearly everything should be information designed. But we’re still no closer to saying what information design is.

Imagine if you will, a basic chair. It’s there. You can sit on it. It is perfectly functional and doesn’t seem like its going to break anytime soon. It conveys chair-ness admirably. An engineer (and this is a gross over simplification, here) might look at the chair and pronounce it perfectly satisfactory. An artist might look at it and say that it needs to fly, or be flourescent pink. I don’t know what artists do so I’m speculating rampantly here.

An information designer, on the other hand, could look at the chair and think: ‘Great! A seat’ but as they sat on it they’d start to wonder if the seat would be more comfortable at an angle. Or with a cushion. Or what if three squabbling children all wanted to sit on the chair — can I help it survive that intact? Is the space between it and the next chair wide enough for a person of considerable size to navigate?

I believe information designers are ergonomists. If that’s even a word. We make it our jobs to make something that’s not just functional, but better than functional. Helpful. Transforming.

We can start the design process with something that needs changing, or something that needs creating out of nothing.

That kind of approach can be taken anywhere, and applied to nearly anything. It’s not art, it can’t and shouldn’t transcend our understanding because, with a few notable exceptions (cat flaps, anyone?) it’s purpose is facilitating human understanding. Making life easier no matter where you are or how poor your circumstances.

My own twist on information design is that it should, wherever possible, make the available choices as clear and understandable as possible, so you can make the right one for you.

Too many people in this world struggle on without time, money, chances to think clearly free from sometimes mortal stress, education opportunities, healthcare options, food, water and a million other deprivations both mental and physical. All of these stresses compete with our feelings of autonomy and our perception of the choices we have.

Information design isn’t the answer to those situations, but it’s one of the tools that can help. And that’s why I am an information designer, and what I think information design really is.

I’d already done a screenshot idea for a London Bus app after Countdown the live bus tracking system was launched, so I thought — hey, why not design a bus app? There’s loads out there just for tracking buses, so I thought, what’s the one thing we all like to do about public transport? Oh yes, complain!

So I made* an app that was all about complaining — but, y’know — quietly. Since the Great British Public doesn’t really like to make a fuss. Or talk. Or make eye contact.

*that is to say, designed, without actually programming it!

The map is actually a built-in, crowd-sourced warning tool — bus-stops where major problems are reported are flagged in red, minor problems in amber and clear in green.

People can report full buses that whizz past, loooong queues and ohgodlateagain buses while they’re in the queue, or leave a comment about the indignity of it all. And once they get on the bus — reporting priorities change. Have they got a seat? Is the bus not going anywhere fast? Or maybe some kid in the next seat has forgotten their headphones again.

Ultimately there are several major logistical problems to iron out with this idea — how to tell WHICH bus just whizzed past, for instance. And for stops with multiple buses, the queue might only be a problem for one of them. But I think it would be an interesting idea to channel our great British reserve (aka seething inner rage) on public transport into something like this. And maybe with 6 months of crowd-sourced data, TFL could actually do something about the most troubled spots!

England — now

I really believe this data transparency can help us achieve great things. So I was very happy when I first went to an open data conference and started talking about plain language, as people were very receptive.  It’s not just about the data, I tried to say — you have to make sure you’re giving people the right advice about how to interpret the data too, and for that you need plain language. Great, they said, then walked away to talk about XML or some other programming thing. Why? Well, most of them were programmers, so that makes sense. And I came to the eventual conclusion that because plain language can’t be programmed — it’s not an ‘easy’ win — people lost interest quickly.

Which is why Alice Bell’s post Making ‘Nullius’ Public really resonated with me. Open data is a fantastic goal, and I wholeheartedly support what its trying to achieve and the lengths the movement has gone to, to successfully court both this government and the last. But to be really accessible, and truly usable, it needs sound interpretation and clear communication.

From a (semi-)professional plain language perspective, I believe open data really benefits from exposure to experts and interpreters, and vice versa. Infographics can be a good example of this. However, they are usually built on a direct data-to-interpreter relationship, which can lead to mistakes, and if they’re popular, those mistakes can be compounded. The question for me is does interpreter alone necessarily have all the knowledge to get to the bottom of an issue? For me, that answer is usually no, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

For example, I really wanted to take part in the latest financial challenge from Information is Beautiful. I looked at the data, examined GDP and debt relationships — apparently external debt (what we owe other countries) is more important than internal debt for measuring financial stability — ranked countries (according to my calculations Ethiopia is one of the financially healthiest countries in the world… ahem), examined the data for patterns, but I knew, ultimately, that I was missing something too big to make doing the infographic worth my while. My interpretation, whatever it might have turned out to be, would be essentially worthless, because I didn’t have the knowledge. I didn’t know what the variables were.

In an ideal world, as a graphic and written interpreter of data, trends and world events, I’d have access to something resembling the journalistic process, an information triangle of:

1. The hard data to provide the bedrock for my argument.
2. An unbiased expert (or two oppositely biased ones, as long as they could legitimately be called experts) on call to fill in the knowledge gaps that skew my calculations.
3. My own expertise in communicating stories (such as it is).

I feel we would all benefit immeasurably from a way to reach out to each other: open data specialists and technologists; plain language writers and communications people; scientific, economic, political and other experts for help with our issues.

To celebrate Plain English day, here are some reasons to keep your language plain and simple.

1. Trustworthiness
   When people understand what you’re saying, they’re more inclined to trust you. Or rather, I should say that when people cannot understand what you’re saying without considerable effort, they’re less inclined to trust you. Long-winded language can look like a deliberate attempt to keep the facts from the people who need them.
2. Saving money
   If you want your customers to do something, it’s probably in your interest that the people you want to follow them make fewer mistakes. The more mistakes they make, the more costly it is for you — your administration costs rise, your call centre has to take more calls. One knock-on affect might be that the people with genuinely complicated issues suffer from longer response times as your business or service spends more time dealing with basic enquiries. Consistently using plain language helps reduce confusion.
3. Greater efficiency
   When you apply plain language to your processes and procedures you can see positive benefits too — it’s not just about leaflets and letters. Do people persistently fall at one particular hurdle in a form you need them to fill in? Do your customers get so far in a transaction with you, then go elsewhere before you get a chance to make a sale? The way you use language could be a significant barrier to keeping that customer. Maybe you’ve used some jargon that’s part of your internal way of working — does your customer need to see that? Or would they be better off seeing things in terms that are relevant to them? Smooth the way for them with plain language.

Keeping your audience in mind is the most important thing. Plain language at a science conference is different from plain language for a local council, but it’s always worthwhile making sure your message is tailored to the people who will want to hear it.