Link roundup for August 2016

Design is about making decisions. Here’s a good look at how different decisions about the same numbers can give you dramatically different maps:

Hat tip to Justin Kiggins.

One of the problems with a long-running blog like this is that I can’t remember if I’ve linked out to this series of blog posts on data visualization before or not. I am quite certain that I have not mentioned they are all collected in an affordable ebook. And there is also this list of what students find hard about making visuals.

Someone on Quora asked what makes for an engaging scientific poster. Warning: contains me.

There was a dreadful op ed in The Guardian about being a serious academic and how social media gets in the way of that or something. Anyone who claims to be “serious” today is setting themselves up for being lampooned for self-importance. See the #SeriousAcademic hashtag on Twitter for reactions, and Emily Willingham’s riposte. Janice Geary’s reaction, though, gave me pause:

How is it that social media is controversial for the #seriousacademic, but somehow we all still make posters like they accomplish something?

Obviously, I have a horse in this race. I will argue to Janice that posters can accomplish things. My best example is how being in a poster session led to co-organizing an international symposium. I would welcome other examples! How did you get things done in a poster session?
 
Now, a bit of summertime fun.

If you were one of the many who dug Stranger Things on Netflix, you will be pleased to know you can tap into the power its pastiche here.

There are some limitations. It seems to stall out at five letter words for that second line. “Posters” was apparently too long for a second line. Still fun. Hat tip to Doc Becca.

Today’s demonstration of the power of proximity in design comes courtesy of this unfortunate pairing of advertisements:

Hat tip to Andrew Bloch.

Scott McCloud’s “Big triangle” and poster design

Posters are a visual medium. But not everything is equally visual. A picture of a real object is very visual, and the best thing to have on a poster. A scatter plot is less visual. And text is the least of all.

I was thinking about how I might make that point, um, visually, and I suddenly realized that I was just recreating one side of Scott McCloud’s triangle from Understanding Comics.

If you have not read Understanding Comics... oh, how I envy you. You have that to look forward to. It is a wonderful book. Even if you are the sort who thinks, “Ugh, superheroes,” get over it, read this damn book, and have your consciousness expanded. It is an undisputed classic book.

Here’s a except relevant to the matter at hand:

And that’s the point I was trying to make, except McCloud did it better over twenty years ago.

Received information is immediate; perceived information takes effort. This is why nobody likes posters with too much writing. It takes effort that, in a busy conference setting, nobody wants to give. And that you should not feel entitled to.

McCloud calls this left to right gradient a change in “iconic abstraction.” It forms one side of a triangle that he uses as a guide to the universe of visual possibility. McCloud explains his big triangle on his webpage here. (But the explanation in the full book is better!)

Here are three common elements of academic posters placed on McCloud’s triangle:

Text has great meaning, but it’s perceived information, particularly big blocks of text.

Graphs are visual, but are often abstract. So they move up along the abstraction side of the triangle, though they are not at the top.

You want to try to push as much as you can towards the bottom right corner of the triangle. You can move text to the left by writing less of it (remember, there are gradations along these axes). Show pictures if you possibly can.

External links

Scott McCloud
Undertstanding Comics (Amazon page)

Lurkers and claques

Most of the readers of this blog are lurkers. They read, but they don’t feel obliged to make a comment, or send me a tweet, or email, or anything else. And that’s fine. I’m a lurker in many online spaces.

Some poster viewers are lurkers, too. They will see your poster during the poster session, and they are interested, but they will not approach you. Instead, they will often wait until you are giving a tour of your poster to someone else. Then, and only then, will they walk up and casually listen over the shoulder of the person you are mostly talking to.

I only learned about this during the last #SciFund Challenge poster class. Several of the class participants admitted that this was their poster viewing strategy. It’s understandable. Not everyone is comfortable walking up cold to someone they’ve never met before, and saying, “What’s to learn here?” (This is usually one of the first things I say to a poster presenter.)

What can you, as a poster presenter, do to reach out to the lurkers? First, be aware of your surroundings. Keep an eye out for someone on the edges, listening over the shoulder. If you see that person, make an effort to turn to them, engage them in conversation. Say something like, “This is my poster. Please let me know if I can answer questions. Or would you like a run through?”

But I have an even more cunning plan.

At a play one time, I was talking to one of the crew about how different the play felt depending on the mood of the audience. A big, enthused audience made so much difference. I commented, in what I thought was a joke, “It almost makes you want to hire people to show up, sit in the audience, and applaud.”

“Oh, they do,” she replied matter of factly. “It’s called a claque.”

Instead of waiting for people to walk up to your poster, find yourself a claque. You don’t need a big claque; you probably only need one person. You don’t need your claque to cheer and applaud, but just someone who is clearly listening to an explanation of the poster. Have that person at your poster to give the lurkers someone to eavesdrop on.

Your listener might be someone you know from your department, but not your lab. Ask someone you met earlier at the conference if they can come by your poster. Get your boyfriend or girlfriend or best friend to hear the tour of your poster a few extra times.

While posters are supposed to be “social objects” to facilitate conversations, having people around can act as an even more powerful social cue. If someone else is already there, it lowers the barrier for everyone else to walk up.

Plus, nothing succeeds like success. If people see a lot of viewers at a poster, they’re all the more likely to be curious to see what the poster is about.

Statue pic from here.

New Nature article on posters

Nature magazine has a feature on posters up today. It features my co-instructor in the #SciFund Challenge poster class, Anthony Salvango.

Nature wants you to tweet your #PosterWins and #PosterFails! Following that hashtag could be fun for this blog... I submitted this recent beauty as for #PosterWins and one of my own for #PosterFails.

Reference

Woolston C. 2016. Conference presentations: Lead the poster parade. Nature 536: 115-117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nj7614-115a