@AppDefects wrote:
There's an ongoing research project “Reimagining Visuals for Cybersecurity”, which is sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation, that is examining the current "state" of cybersecurity imagery. ...
The report carries a very important, but only tangentially stated, message: If you wish to communicate effectively, have your techies and engineers work with competent graphic artists. The complexities of visual communication are beyond the training and experience of most folks in our field.
I am reminded of the damage done by presentation software, beginning with Harvard Graphics in the 1980's and then carried on by PowerPoint, Keynote, and others since then. The ability of managers and techies to prepare their own graphics with those programs caused enterprises to reduce and then eliminate separate graphics shops all over government and industry. The result has been TERRIBLE graphics in both reports and slide decks, which fail to make the desired point and are often unreadable, especially when projected on a screen during presentations.
An adjunct to the mess caused by direct access to PowerPoint has been the ugly clip art libraries in Word and its cousins, and the ability of analysts performing valuable computations in Excel, et al., to generate charts and graphs. Not wanting to work on a graphic to truly communicate, the analysts simply generate the graphic in the spreadsheet, then paste that graphic into the report or slide deck. Such presentations are almost never readable or effective.
Trying to use the advice of Edward Tufte requires a separate discussion.. so if anyone wants to go down that road, let's start a separate thread. I have attended his one day course and worked with his books, so can provide some informed comments.
