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by Mercutionario 4645 days ago
Hey! I get your point but complex data visualizations that convey large amounts of information suffer a bias: they are overly complex by condensating too much information, and very often they do so to look obtuse and expert (and thus cool).

Our point is that this pieces information could easily have been conveyed in separate simple charts, conveying each of the *data_points you quote one chart at a time.

You can understand this type of chart because you can take the time and the effort to work on the comprehension of it. And you're interested. We think it's a segregating way to convey information, leaving on the side of the road people who could have benefitted of the message were it explained in a simpler purer format.

1 comments

Choose your audience. If you're aiming for quick impact your point stands, but if you want to convey maximum information in a usable form that infographic is excellent.

The really simple infographic of the MS/Nokia purchase actually makes no point at all; of course the WinPho marketshare figure is a reasonable proxy for the Nokia marketshare figure, so if one is small the other will be too.

The sad thing is that I absolutely agree with your basic message, but your examples are off.

I get the point, but here you're blaming us for choosing a simple infographic which chose an approximation you personnally disagree with. You're blaming the content, but the method of representation is not off in and of itself. This infographic make tons of sense I think at underlining how much of an uphill battle MS/Nokia are facing in the mobile world. But that's not the point of the example.

Conveying information in charts is more efficient and quicker (and can lead, yes, sometimes, to data abuse), than using cabalistic data visualizations for the sake of Adobe Illustrator that obscure the clarity of the message by adding density to it. We believe that is not a good way to carry data for maximum impact to your audience, whoever that is.