Yesterday Fred Wilson of Union Ventures posted on his blog, AVC, about the importance of information presentation.
As he notes,
“I feel that how information is presented is often more powerful than the underlying data.
And when you want someone to understand what you are saying, it is best to put that information in the format that person is most comfortable in.
For me, that is often a sheet.”
Understanding your user and the context of data presentation is key making your content valuable. Fred’s desired presentation format is a spreadsheet. For others it may be a chart, diagram, illustration, video, or interpretive dance. In all cases, interpreting information and presenting it in a form that makes it usable is what I call UX for data. To do it well, we need to understand the content, the user, and the presentation context, so we can bring them all together in the most powerful way possible.
Whether creating a simple spreadsheet or an interactive online visualization each of these three aspects of UX for data is needed. Only then can we be confident that people can understand what we are trying to communicate. I’m glad to know Fred Wilson sees it the same way.
