Sounds of your own voice

I struggle with communication.

I want to resolve the conflicting message of “more information” and “less information”.

I want to stop talking so much.

I want to eliminate redundant messages.

I want to effectively understand my audience and target appropriately.

I feel like my time is wasted.

I feel like I waste (peer|manager|customer)’s time.

I feel like people don’t have time to read, or parse messages for the context I intend.

We value time highly. We don’t always value another’s time.

Pictures let people draw own conclusions from data. We don’t draw enough.This isn’t something new, people frequently discover the idea that images convey meaning/intention much better than words.

It’s about time. Words have to be parsed, cross cultural differences and shades of meaning. Pictures can present the data in a smaller space requiring less effort to parse.

• Images sometimes inspire others to build off the image.
• Images alleviated some misunderstandings.
• Images require thought and effort to convey the right information.
• Images decrease the amount of time duplicating message.

We are bombarded with images all the time. We have built up a certain skepticism in ‘believing what we see’. There are certain elements that make a good image

• show source of data
• imply conclusions
• graph to scale
• DATA vs assumptions, ie values vs percentages which can be misrepresented.

Intended Audience

Images have intended audiences. Sometimes the audience for an image is me! The image while self-educational may need to be modified to convey the appropriate level of information to a peer or a manager.