Making a Statement

While Metrics make my heart go pitter patter, I have to admit, they are not everyone's cup of tea.  It unlikely that very many people will be excited by a 100+ report on an organization's performance.  However, recording performance is not very effective if no one reads it. 

So, how do you make looking at reports more appealing?  Enter my friend, the infographic.  Infographics can help in a variety of different ways.  First, they help create context.  It's very hard to look at a large list of numbers and know how they compare.  Making a visual gives quick understanding and will be a lot easier to get the people who need to look at the numbers, look at the numbers.

Next, it's unlikely in today's busy world that someone is going to have time to sit down and read a novel on performance.  Making information faster to digest will make it more likely the reader will make it to the end.  Most will not even start if confronted with solid text and pages of table.

It can be hard to take the time after spending hours and hours gathering data to make it look attractive.  However, there has been a large proliferation of inforgraphic programs that are web based that do not take a graphic's art degree or a significant investment in time.  I tried out Piktochart and found it very easy to use.  It certainly makes a better report front page than anything I could have made in Word with the same amount of time.

Just look at it...

It's so much more inviting than a plain white background word document.  It certainly has a leg up on the clasic APA title page.  I invite you to give Piktochart a try.  It's a fun program and may even get more people to read your hard work!