Part One: Patterns are easy to understand
As software consultants, part of our role in serving our clients is as ambassadors (advisors, if you will) in the realm of information technology. Our clients are experts in their fields, with a lot of knowledge that they bring to the table when working with us. They trust us to build custom software to leverage their expertise and enable their interests by working with their data and bringing it to life.
Working with data, making it easy to work with and visualize can include charts and graphs, forms and reports, infographics and drawings, user interface and intuitive design. The importance of this may seem obvious, as well it should. In understanding why this is so useful to us, let’s look a little deeper.
Data has little meaning without context, and much more meaning when presented in a way that makes sense. It is helpful if we are able to convey meaning with relatable convention that can then be used to identify recognizable patterns.
We are naturally very good at recognizing patterns. For example, we are hardwired to recognize faces. This is, in part, why it is so hard to counterfeit a dollar bill. We have all seen George Washington’s face depicted on a one dollar bill, so we recognize if it’s even slightly different in a fake bill. We are so good at it, we even see faces where there are none. The term for this phenomenon is Pareidolia and it extends beyond faces to all kinds of patterns that we recognize and associate with something else.
Can you spot the face in the grass? Recognizing patterns can be important!
Further explanation comes by way of a term coined by author and psychologist Michael Shermer in his article Patternicity. Rather than viewing this as an error in cognition, this skill is actually an advantage that is handed down from our ancestors. Our ability to distinguish patterns makes up an important part of how we learn.
This highlights how well we are equipped to work with patterns as communicative tools. In an information age, we are inundated with data. Making sense of that data and representing it in a meaningful way can be a challenge.
One of my all-time favorite presentations on the topic is by Hans Rosling, in his Ted talk from 2006. It is inspiring and well worth the time to watch.
This illustrates some of the possibilities of working with raw data:
- display it in an easy to understand and meaningful way
- convey understanding not otherwise possible
- it would be overwhelming to work with by itself
- on it’s own, might have little meaning
This particular video helped spark an interest in me for visualizing data and exploring emerging tools that empower us to translate meaningless noise into understandable patterns. In fact, a similar charting tool to the one shown by Dr. Rosling is available from Google’s charting tools.
Carl Sagan is quoted as saying, “The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.” You could make a similar statement regarding data by saying that a chart is not about the data that goes into it, but how that data is represented.
This is also where our client’s expertise is invaluable. They provide the context and instruction for how they envision their data be represented. As software consultants, we provide the expertise in being able to turn that data into something easy, informative and intuitive.
Our respective fields converge to provide an end product greater than would be possible individually and one we can both be proud of.
