The LinkedIn Map of my own professional network is both hideously ugly and beautifully instructive at the same time.

It’s beautifully ugly.

It’s ugly, because colors can’t be changed, because perspective can’t be rotated, because labeling only works when zoomed-in.  LinkedIn depicts my professional network as one big blob and some other separate connections.

But it’s instructive, for many more reasons… [Read more]

The materials for this sculpture are “Reed, wood, plastic, data”.

Hurricane Noel: Reed, wood, plastic, data; 32"x32"x36", 2010

Reed, wood, and plastic, sure.  But data?  As an art supply?

Yes.

Artist Nathalie Miebach weaves weather data into 3D sculptures.  And these 3D sculptures are also musical scores.

“Every single bead, every single colored band, represents a weather element that can also be read as a musical note,” she says.

Market Researchers are so behind…

[Read more]

“The debt crisis in the European Monetary Union as seen by a 9-year old” reinforces four topics for market researchers:

1. Data visualization
2. Child labor
3. Crowdsourcing
4. Form follows function

[Read more]

“Cancer Sucks” said one of the buttons on the nurse’s uniform.

This is not news.

But, as a market researcher facing more downtime, I started analyzing the button.  Grammatically, culturally, typographically.  And there are implications for how we present market research information.

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The Onion and The Economist are required reading for many market researchers.  Conveniently, the two publications sometimes cross-reference each other.  Like when The Onion “reported”…

‘The Economist’ To Halt Production For Month To Let Readers Catch Up

LONDON—World-renowned news and opinion magazine The Economist announced plans to suspend any new online and print content for the next month in an effort to finally allow subscribers a chance to catch up…

Seeing my own stack of unread issues of The Economist, I decided to catch up (whilst The Economist went on publishing, of course).

Two articles immediately lent themselves to our topic of data presentation.  One article suggests  a compelling correlation, the other offers a cunning comparison.  Both are relevant for market researchers and how we look at data.

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Fifty percent of all MBAs graduated in the bottom half of their business school class!

This is one reason I suggested replacing MBAs with MFAs when I told you Your Data Are Ugly.

But really, my data are ugly.  The whole universe of MBA-related humor before me, and the best I can come up with is a pie chart based upon a recycled doctor joke. [Read more]

Your data are ugly.  Not wrong.  Just ugly.

I don’t care if you can distill your research insights into 140 characters or less.  Give me something to hang on my wall.  Give me something to show off.

Eddie Izzard said,

“All that people care about is the look, because there’s figures on this. 70% of what people react to is the look, you know, it’s how you look; and 20% is about how you sound; and only 10% is what you say.”

Did he stand there with a chart to explain this?  No, he pitched up in full makeup and high heels.  In 1999!

Over a decade later, where are you?  Still making charts nobody hangs on their wall?  Next steps:

• Re-read all your Edward Tufte books and then forget all about them.
• See what Aaron Koblin is doing right now.
• Stop hiring MBAs and replace with MFAs.
• Fingerpaint.

Upcoming installments will cover each of these topics and more.

I fell backward into market research after training to be a city planner.  Before that, I taught elementary school.  Following a decade of acquiring market research at a semiconductor company, I am now providing market research to technology and telecommunications companies globally.  And blogging about it.

“Blogging:  Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.”

So, it should be handy that I have an undergraduate degree in English & American Literature & Language.  Except that I took most of my classes outside the department in electives like Visual & Environmental Studies.  And my favorite professor taught Landscape Architecture.

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