The manner of presentation of data has a profound effect on the uptake of that data by the intended audience.
For example - which is worse, "A child is hospitalised every two weeks in New Zealand as a result of a driveway accident." Or, "26 children a year are hospitalised as a result of a driveway accident?" Both the same statistic but different presentation.
A topical subject. "Texting in your car is dangerous." Or, "Texting in your car is more dangerous than drunk driving."
(Seth Godin has a blog entry - When data and decisions collide with more on that and other examples.)
It is all about scale and relevance. Bringing a subject into a scale that the audience can understand and that has relevance to something that they can measure easily.
In “The World of 100,” a series of poster-infographics designed by Tony Ng, he takes the world population of 6 Billion down to 100 in a creative and graphical way. Now we can understand...
The question we need to ask then - if we are presenting data to a patient, audience, funding body, or whoever - how do we make it to match their scale and relevant to them - not us?
Comments