We're not claiming the beauty of some of the best infographics, and this is just a first effort at helping to make sense of the data that's there (a 'straightforward' Lamplight outcomes report generates up to 18 different statistics for each outcome measure). Perhaps some of the 'beauty' of this is that Lamplight generates this in one click from your standard reports...
In the first part, the background bar is scaled to the minimum and maximum possible values for the measure, and the arrow shows the average start and average end scores for all our service users (of course this is fictional data). The second chart shows some distribution: the width of the arrows is proportional to the number of people that saw positive or negative (or no) change; the height is proportional to the amount of change they saw (on average).
We'd be really interested to hear feedback on whether this helps, and what other measures and graphics might also be useful.
Really pleased to see you thinking about this. Reliable visualisation of data is going to become more and more important for charity sector organisations (and for-profits too), so anything that makes it easier to produce, and which gives flexibility in its creation is to be welcomed.
ReplyDeleteNot sure, however, given how infographics can so easily distort info, and info should be presented differently depending on the audience, whether they can be created effectively enough from a database, and presumably created by people whose skills lie in using the database rather than in comms, graphics and marketing.
But the fact you're thinking about this is a very good sign.
Hi Howard,
DeleteThanks for your comment.
On your second para, I agree. Our intention really is that this is an internal tool to help organisations understand their data a bit better. To give you some idea, one report in Lamplight can generate a table with hundreds of data cells. We see this as a quick and easy way to get to grips with some of the subtlety of that data, and ask further questions, that are going to help the organisation shape their services to be more effective.
We don't particularly see this as something you'd just send to funders. In fact I really dislike that, where a system produces a pdf or something to send straight out to funders. Data, however it's presented, needs interpretation and stories, and computers are really bad at that stuff!
Also, one of our driving motivations is that small charities can have access to a good database system - the kinds of charities that often won't have much access to people with skills in comms, graphics or marketing. So I guess the 'enough' in your 'effectively enough' depends rather a lot on the context.
And we'll keep thinking...
Matt