Context
“Is there a more visually-impactful way to present a fraction?” I asked myself repeatedly as I was looking at a set of statistical data I gathered for my Original Proposal, the doctoral oral candidacy examination in Purdue Chemistry. I had analyzed the labs for all General Chemistry Courses at Purdue University in 2018 and identified those that involve spectrophotometry, a technique that is widely used in chemical analysis. My design goal for this mini-project is to find a way to sell the idea that “A big amount of General Chemistry labs at Purdue involve this instrumental analysis method, and we should care how we teach it to the students.”
Before
| Course Code (CHM) | #Lab Using Spectrophotometry | #Total Lab |
|---|---|---|
| 11100 | 2 | 13 |
| 11200 | 3 | 12 |
| 11500 | 2 | 14 |
| 11600 | 4 | 11 |
| 12500 | 2 | 8 |
| 12600 | 3 | 8 |
| 12901 | 4 | 11 |
| 13600 | 1 | 11 |
| Total | 21 | 88 |
Background Information
| Audience | Faculties in my thesis committee that are professors interested in chemical education research. |
| Use | As a diagram on the slides used for a proposal defense |
| Goal | To persuade the audiences that we shall care and be reflective on the way we teach this technique as students in Purdue General Chemistry courses at Purdue use it frequently. |
| Challenge | (1) Short attention span of the audiences, they usually do not read all text in a paragraph or numbers in a table unless being properly guided. (2) Lack of visual cue on the table, the ratios between spectrophotometry lab to total lab number are not directly shown. |
Ideas for Makeover
- Use both table and chart to provide both numerical and visual representation for the data.
- Increase the data-ink ratio by removing the gridlines of the table.
- Use (square) dot matrix chart to show the ratio of the number of spectrophotometry lab to total lab number in each course.
- Apply Gestalt Principle of Similarity by coding the spectrophotometry labs different than the remaining labs to create a contrast between the subject and the context.
- Apply Gestalt Principle of Proximity by making the gaps between squares in the same row smaller than the gaps between squares from the different row. This will make it easier to group the squares vertically, i.e., by courses.
After
Graphical Tools
| Compose | Show the numerical data on the left, and a dot matrix chart next to each course. |
| Abstract | Each square represents a lab. |
| Color | Use bright pink to indicate spectrophotometry labs, grey to indicate the remaining labs. |
| Refine | Remove the grids for the table. Group the squares that represent the labs from the same course closer together. |
| Software | Microsoft PowerPoint |
Side Note
Using a table and matrix dot charts side-to-side did create the synergetic effect that I desired. I did not have to slow down my presentation while presenting this piece of information as the audiences saw it instantaneously. If any of the audience were interested in the percentage in any particular courses, they might check the numbers. Using infographic properly makes data presentation more impactful.
I intentionally chose not to present the data solely using a table because of the nature of slide presentation. It was a presentation at 8 am in the morning, I needed something bright and exciting to make my case. Besides, I hate that when people put a big chunk of information on a slide and expect the audience to make sense of every bit of it. We, as storytellers, has an obligation to tell people why they should care instead of letting data speak for themselves.
P.S.: I did successfully defend my proposal and passed the candidacy exam!