Here’s the thing with data: it’s wonderful to collect, but in the end, you need to use it and take action. The question is, how can you entice people so they’ll pay attention? Presenting data is an art in itself, and you need to know a thing or two about it to achieve your goals. Take the color red, for example. When used in the right places, it instantly captures someone’s attention. But determining these ‘right places’ is one of the biggest challenges. It requires you to filter – a must if you want the receiver’s brain to digest important information, but quite the pickle for you as all data seems equally important. How on earth are you going to mine through your ocean of data to pick the two to five items you really, truly need to visualize?
Big picture, tiny details: you need ’em all!
All right. Consider yourself a painter for a second. You start a portrait, drawing the nose and eyes and mouth and jawline. Afterwards, you peer at each detail. It looks like you nailed them all. But before patting yourself on the back, you take a step back to study the portrait as a whole. Then you notice something strange: the details are spot on, but there’s something wrong with the overall structure. The artist in you sighs. It’s time to grab your easel and get back to work – you’re far from done.
The point is, everyone has a global and a local vision. If you’re a manager, you need to make sure your company is doing okay at the overarching, organizational level, but at the same time, you have to keep track of small-scale issues that require instant solutions – from a broken machine to a customer complaint. The most valuable asset in this regard? The human eye.
It’s right in front of you (and always has been)
A quick look at history and science shows that the world around us is groomed – predefined, if you will – to be the best fit for human vision. Your eyes can zoom in and out very quickly to analyze whether something is right or wrong. And that’s why conveying information in a visual, trimmed-down manner is so effective – that is, if you do it correctly. There are methods and techniques to pull it off. You can, for example, use warm colors at the front and cold ones in the background – just like a real painter!
Want to learn more about the scientific and artistic approach to filtering? Watch this video
Need help with filtering? Please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d be happy to perform a Quick Scan and discuss your Visual Management opportunities.