a foray in to football infographics

 

 
I've not blogged for a bit. I have been busy starting-up Runpath Digital (a digital agency run by the founders and owners lovemoney.com.) Check us out! (You can also now hire me if you like!)

We recently launched our client drive campaign 'Making Time To Think' and since then I've spent a bit of my time talking with potential new clients. All good.

One of the most interesting projects I've been working on from a personal perspective has been that for a client who asked us to think about some data visualisations for football.

The brief was to take certain data sets from a football scenarios (a penalty, a substitution etc..) and present them in a way that would be digestible and informative for a TV audience.

A quick overview of the work we did can be seen here. But, simply from the point of view of indulgence, revelry, enjoyment and posterity here are some things I picked up from the work.

(Unfortunately, I can only really say that the following points apply specifically to infographics on TV but hopefully there may also be nuggets that can be applied more broadly to creating infographics in general...)

At the project kick-off we spent a while considering if we were using the correct data sets. This point was pretty contentious in the user group. Immediately, this surfaced a couple of things about infographics:

1.) Actually, you perhaps don't 'necessarily' have to be 'too' prescriptive with the data you show in the graphic. Something I realised quickly was that different people are interested in different types of data and different levels of data. For example, some can handle a lot of data, some are overloaded easily. Some like percentages and ratios, some like raw numbers. So, sometimes being prescriptive about what people will want to see is hard. In fact, you could argue it's better just to concentrate on putting it out there.

2.) Kind of related to the above point is that it is probably a higher priority for the info graphic to present data sets clearly than extract absolute meaning from data sets themselves.

The actual job of finding meaning in the data is arguably better left open to the individual looking at the information in a new and visual way.

Beyond these broader points there were a few key things I picked up regarding actual infographic 'design treatments' :

1) Apply consistency. Where multiple screens are required it goes without saying that there should be consistency between them. Pretty quickly you want your viewer/user to get accustomed to the style with which you present the information on screen.

2) Understand and establish 'camps' within the data sets you have. We identified there were a few 'camps' within the football data we had. For example, vital player stats (player name, shirt number etc...) and player performance stats (goals, fouls committed, assists etc...)

3) Following on from above, we worked on individual treatments for the individual 'camps' within the data.  For example, we had a specific treatment for player vital stats that we shared between the screens we produced. We then created a distinct set of conventions for displaying the player performance stats. This seemed to work well as a way of scaling designs from one screen and scenario to another.

4) It is not necessary to re-invent the wheel with the infographic presentation. Stable treatments like simple bar charts can work well to present data clearly and boldly on screen. It's tempting to try more adventurous treaments, which is fine, but we didn't find it necessary in our case.

5) Transitions are really important. (Both for moving between graphics to indicate a change like a substitution and to help higlight and focus on individual elements of data on screen.)

6) Consider screen real-estate. While it is often ok to have lots of information on screen during analysis etc.. you do want to minimise screen intrusion whilst there is live action happening in the foreground.
 
Phew, that was a brain chuck! Feel better now!

All that's left to say is that if you work with infographics and agree/disagree with my piffle I'd love to hear your feedback below...