The Trouble with Visual Explanations: A Quick Look at Common Problems

By Don Moyer | Member

Can you imagine trying to understand the structure of a DNA helix without seeing a picture of it?

Sometimes the expression “I see what you mean” can be taken literally. Can you imagine trying to understand the structure of a DNA helix without seeing a picture of it? For some topics, especially nonlinear things like hierarchies, structures, or systems, visual explanations are more eloquent than textual descriptions alone.

A growing number of writers and editors understand the value of a visual explanation. And because image-making tools from PowerPoint to Photoshop make it easier than ever to create them, more visual explanations appear in publications and on websites than ever before. Some are brilliant, but many are flawed. Here's an informal survey of some of the most common problems with visual explanations.

Problem 1: Too Abstract

The people in your audience live in the real, physical world. In general, they tend to be good at thinking that involves the concrete and tangible. Thinking about abstractions is more difficult.

We grasp stories that are based on factories, trucks, and shoppers and have a harder time understanding stories based on supply chains, operational efficiencies, and consumer feedback. In general, the more abstract the story, the more important it is to make it concrete. Visual explanations are a good way to do that.

Too many visual explanations use abstractions where they could easily depict the tangible. Writing the words “consumers” and “retail” in boxes and connecting them with arrows is abstract. Instead, connect a doodle of a person with a shopping bag to one of a store, and label them.

Figure 1. These sketches use simple icons to express abstract ideas. Although the reader may not understand them at first, a label solves that problem.

Your reader will grasp your message more quickly and remember it, too.

Fortunately, most stories in business, technology, and science are about the real world, so it's usually easy to show concrete things—ships, money, computer users, prescription drugs. Where the topic is truly abstract, develop symbols to represent the abstractions. Connected dots can represent a network or a padlock can represent security.

Problem 2: Wordless Mysteries

Some people think that if they depict ideas visually, they should let the image do all the work. This is usually a mistake. While IKEA's wordless assembly directions may be an exception, most visual explanations need words.

Figure 2. Wordless explanations like this drawing for Harvard Business Review are rarely required. Instead, fortify your visual explanation with text.

It's okay to start with pictures. Concentrate on finding ways to make your most important ideas visible. But then buttress your visual explanation with text to help readers confirm their understanding. Use titles, headings, captions, callouts, labels, and notes to remove mystery.

Don't overdo it. As a rule of thumb, you don't need to talk about what you have clearly shown. But when visual details might be ambiguous, a good text label, key, or sidenote can help.

Problem 3: Arbitrary Structure

The organizing structure you choose for a visual explanation will have a profound effect on how well people understand and remember the story. You and your audience are probably already familiar with structures such as timelines, venn diagrams, flow charts, and hierarchies. These and other classics have proven their worth over and over. Use them when they fit your message.

Too often, though, storytellers squeeze their text into an arbitrary structure with little connection to the message. When the thinking is, “Let's shape the process flow to look like a pretzel because pretzels are our best-selling product,” that's a sign of trouble.

The most common forced structure is what Gardiner Morse called “crap circles” in his Harvard Business Review article (November 2005). Crap circles are visual explanations that arrange elements in a circle in order to borrow the dynamics of a true reinforcing cycle. Imagine this sequence:

• You invest your profits in innovation.

• Innovation efforts produce new products that customers love.

• Customers buy more products and you get more profits.

• You invest those profits in innovation and go around again. Whoopee!

Although that's an oversimplification of what happens in the real world, it does outline a true reinforcing cycle. You'll know a true cycle if you can start your narrative at any point and flow gracefully around the circle.

A crap circle, on the other hand, is as arbitrary as a pretzel but more deceptive because it's really a list pretending to be a cycle.

Figure 3. This view of a product life cycle isn't really a cycle. It's just a list that begins with “design” and ends with “end of life.” Logically, there's nothing about the last step that feeds into the first.

Problem 4: Unnecessary Metaphors

Human beings have metaphorical minds. We try to link new things back to things we understand. When you use the right metaphor, including visual metaphors, your reader can understand new topics faster. But metaphors are also dangerous because they are quickly exhausted.

Yes, your bank account is like the gas tank in your car. You need to fill both because they gradually empty. But in many ways, your bank account is not like your gas tank. There's a limit to how much gas you can put into your tank, but there is no limit on how much money you can put in your account. And the gas in your tank cannot grow, but the money in your account can accumulate interest.

My point is that metaphors can bring instant clarity to a new topic, but they can also bring instant confusion when they include notions that don't fit. By all means, use metaphors when they help. But investigate the limits of a metaphor before you commit to it. And pay attention to the baggage it brings. Don't let it add confusion.

Figure 4. Bank account.

Don't forget that you can skip the metaphor altogether and simply show how a bank account works in a visual explanation. You can easily show the ideas of current balance, depositing, withdrawing, and interest without a comparison to a gas tank.

Problem 5: No Flow

Text is linear, so the reader need only follow the thread left by the writer. But with a visual explanation, the reader must find her own navigation path.

Unfortunately for readers, some poor visual explanations are just a pile of facts. They fail to give cues about where to start and how to flow through the content.

Fortunately, there are some cultural conventions you can build on to guide readers through a visual explanation. In Western culture, there is a strong expectation that content on a page or screen will unfold from upper left to lower right. Readers have also learned to pay special attention to whatever is in the center of a composition. And readers naturally pay more attention to elements that are big and assume that small things are subordinate. Use these conventions to help steer readers' attention through the story. And when sequence is especially important, consider numbering the elements of your story.

Figure 5. In this view of a supply chain, important ideas are numbered to encourage the reader to digest them in order and to ensure that nothing is overlooked.

In the visual overview of a supply chain in Figure 5, the reader learns how RFID tags can make a flow more efficient and lower costs. The story starts in the upper left and moves clockwise. All the elements of the story are numbered so the reader will encounter ideas in order and not miss anything important.

Problem 6: A Jumble of Clip Art

Electronic tools like PowerPoint, Keynote, and Visio make it easy to tap libraries of clip art to depict people, computers, buildings, cars, and other props. These tools are fine for sketching and may be useful to share preliminary thoughts with your project team. But it's a mistake to share this hodgepodge with your ultimate audience. Why? Because it's equivalent to serving your party guests a frozen TV dinner.

Figure 6. Examples of insidious clip art.

Clip art creates the illusion of polish with color, shading, shadows, reflections, glitz, and cuteness. It lacks consistency and typically mixes different styles, colors, scales, and detail levels that distract attention from the message. Clip art says the author had so little respect for the audience that he couldn't be bothered to craft a careful product.

Worse, clip art leads you to limit your thinking to the ideas it suggests, rather than starting with a blank canvas.

Clip art is insidious. It bends ideas back to bland conventions and steers you away from saying what you really mean.

Problem 7: All Polish, No Substance

This is the opposite of the clip art problem. Sometimes so much effort goes into aesthetics, special effects, fancy shadows, glowing objects, and 3D wizardry that the scope and structure of the story is neglected.

It is better to show a rough, hand-drawn napkin sketch that makes the topic clear than a gorgeous visual treat that doesn't.

In my workshops, I encourage writers to create simple “napkin sketches” that capture the big ideas they want to share with their audience. By combining a few simple building blocks, it's possible to express a wide range of ideas. Later, if you need polish, designers or graphic artists can create a refined drawing to give your ideas a professional look. When you are communicating with teammates and internal audiences, you seldom need polish. You need good, clear ideas. Your rough napkin sketch will often be adequate.

Stay focused on the thinking problem, not the art problem.

Figure 7. Simple napkin sketches are often adequate to share your thinking.
Aesthetic refinements can come later, if needed.

Problem 8: Suspicious Simplicity

This problem is caused by simplifying the story so much that truth and nuance are eliminated. Readers know a lot about the real world and how it works. They are suspicious when things look too simple. “Enrolling in Medicare—it's as easy as 1, 2, 3.” Really? I doubt it.

Simplifying is great. But if you oversimplify, you'll lose credibility and trigger skepticism. Keep a vivid impression of the ultimate audience before you at all times. Even better, talk to real audience members and share your sketches. Avoid making your story too complex, but be alert for oversimplification, too.

Don Moyer (dmoyer@ThoughtFormDesign.com) is a member of the STC Pittsburgh Chapter and a project leader at ThoughtForm Inc., a communications planning and design firm. Don and his team create visual explanations for companies like Caterpillar, Deloitte, McDonald's, and Steelcase. Don teaches workshops to help designers and writers develop more effective visual explanations, and he speaks frequently about this topic, including workshops at Carnegie Mellon University and STC events.