Why Data Visualization Matters
This week my friend Ahmad Chamy is taking over The Data Daily emails. He’s the Founder/CEO of D Cubed Analytics a Healthcare Analytics firm specializing in Power BI and Microsoft suite of technologies. This week he’s writing about how to communicate effectively with data (either in Healthcare or anywhere else). Check out Monday's email.
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Yesterday we surfaced the issue of information Inundation. Today we will talk about why data visualization is such a powerful tool to deliver data effectively to your audiences.
The Picture Superiority Effect refers to a phenomenon where people recall pictures better than they remember the corresponding words. To put it more simply, pictures are superior to words when it comes to recalling and recognizing information.
For example, a group of researchers at the University of Rochester in 1970 studied the ability of participants to recall pictures by exposing them to more than 2,000 pictures for between 5 to 10 seconds at a time. After three days had passed, the participants could still recall over 90% of the images (Standing, Conezio, and Haber, 1970.)
Not only are pictures more memorable, but their benefits also extend beyond that.
Another group of researchers at Michigan State University examined the effects that pictures had on health-related communications. In their 1966 experiment, the researchers assigned participants either a full text or illustrated instructions on wound care to 400+ patients who visited the ER for lacerations. They found that patients who were given illustrated instructions outperformed text-based ones. (Delp & Jones, 1966)
The patients who received illustrated instructions:
Were more likely to have read the instructions (98% vs 79% in the text-based instructions group)
Were more likely to understand the instructions (46% vs. 6%)
Acted on the wound care advice more often (77% vs. 54%)
Communicating effectively with images and visualization is one of the best tools in the dashboard developers’ toolkit. In fact, communicating with images is six times more effective than words alone. Studies have shown that whereas we remember only 10 percent of what we hear and 30 percent of what we read, we remember a whopping 80 percent of what we see.
In tomorrow’s post, I will share 7 tips for effective healthcare dashboard design.
Ahmad
For The Data Shop
