The power of infographics in research

dissemination
This item contains selected online content. It is for use alongside, not as a replacement for
the module website, which is the primary study format and contains activities and
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About this free course
This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course
H819 The critical researcher: educational technology in practice.
This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised
for your device.
You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free
learning from The Open University –
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/disseminating-research-and-evaluating-info-
graphics/content-section-0.
There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to
demonstrate your learning.
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Contents
Introduction 5
Learning Outcomes 6
1 Getting noticed in an age of information overload 7
2 Visualising data 9
2.1 Introduction to data visualisation 9
3 The power of infographics 12
4 Evaluating infographics 14
4.1 Assessing the quality of infographics 14
4.2 Compiling your own infographics – evaluation checklist 16
4.3 Applying the evaluation checklist 17
End-of-course quiz 19
Conclusion 20
Keep on learning 21
References 21
Acknowledgements 23

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Introduction

Introduction

Figure 1 The conversation prism by Brian Solis and JESS3, The Conversation Prism 2.0.
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Licence https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en
Infographics are becoming an essential tool in data representation, sense-making and
research communication. In this free course, The power of infographics in research
dissemination, you will explore when and how infographics can be useful to your work.
You will look at some good and bad practice in making and using infographics and will
learn how to evaluate infographics that appear to be presenting research evidence. The
course concludes by introducing you to free resources that can help you produce effective
infographics of your own and to critically evaluate the infographics of others. A key focus
of this course – and the postgraduate Open University module on which the course
content is based – is developing your skills and understanding as a critical researcher.
This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course
H819 The critical researcher: educational technology in practice.

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Learning Outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
● demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which infographics can be used to present research findings
● recognise the strengths and weaknesses of infographics as a method of displaying information
● demonstrate skills in critically evaluating infographics used for disseminating research.
1 Getting noticed in an age of information overload

1 Getting noticed in an age of information

overload
Our brains are busier than ever before. We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo
facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out
what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting.
(Levitin, 2015)

The sentiments expressed by Levitin in this quote are widespread. They neatly capture
the phenomenon of information overload – a phrase popularised way back in the 1970s by
Alvin Toffler (1970), who characterised it as ‘the difficulty a person faces when taking a
decision in the presence of excessive information’. By 2002, Eppler and Menjis were
identifying five causes of information overload:

● multiple sources of information

● too much information
● difficult-to-manage information
● irrelevance or unimportance of information
● lack of time to understand information.

As we speed through the twenty-first century, the data and information landscape,
especially online, is growing without precedent. By January 2017 it was estimated that
there were 4.6 billion pages on the World Wide Web (WorldWideWebSize, 2017). This
plethora of information ranges from commercially generated websites and adverts
intended to sell us things (or persuade us to believe things) through to information that
may be relevant, valuable and deeply interesting to the researcher but which may be
obscured by more attention-grabbing web pages. Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants,
reviewed in the article ‘
Tim Wu: “The internet is like the classic story of the party that went sour”’ (Naugh-
ton, 2017), gives a particularly critical account of this situation.
As a consequence, it is ever more challenging for researchers to get their research
findings noticed in the face of a staggering amount of competition. But for anyone
interested in reading about the latest developments in a particular field, it is essential to
question and critically engage with the information available. A further complication lies in
the fact that, as already mentioned, there are few filters online and it is extremely easy to
share information via the internet, irrespective of its quality or accuracy. 2016 and 2017
saw a rapid increase in the scale of ‘fake news’, indicating how easy it is to deceive and
misinform online.
When presentating and disseminating research findings, we have to consider how to
create precisely the right message to have maximum reach and impact upon our intended
audience. There may need to be several different messages for different audiences.
Imagine a medical researcher who has developed a novel technique for treating a
particular condition. They may:

● publish a full presentation of their work in a medical journal

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1 Getting noticed in an age of information overload

● publish a ‘lighter’ version with less technical jargon and fewer of the details in a more
general ‘popular’ science magazine
● write a short piece with no technical language for national news media
● produce posters or infographics for grabbing people’s attention at conferences, in
hospitals or on the web.

Each of these potential dissemination routes would require a slightly different message,
different focus, different wording and different method of presentation. In this short course
you’ll focus on just one of these methods – infographics.

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2 Visualising data

2 Visualising data

Figure 2 Paths in my ed tech landscape by Kristen A Treglia. This file is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike Licence http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0
Infographics – graphical representations of abstract data – can serve two purposes:

● data analysis and sense-making

● communication.

Infographics can be fabulous, beautiful, powerful fusions of art and data that are well
suited for disseminating through social-media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter,
where images work particularly well. They also get some terrible press. The article ‘
Ending the infographic plague’ gives examples of some of the ‘terrible, lying infographics,
which have become endemic in the blogosphere, and constantly threaten to break out into
epidemic or even pandemic status’ (McArdle, 2011).
In this short course, you will encounter the good, the bad and the absolutely stunning in
the world of infographics. You will explore ways to evaluate the accuracy and
effectiveness of infographics that are being used to present research data, as well as
investigate good and bad practice in infographic design.

2.1 Introduction to data visualisation

Figure 3 Open data index data visualisation. Open Knowledge International. This file is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial Licence http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

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2 Visualising data

In the following activity you’ll watch a TED Talk by infographics celebrity David
McCandless, which will give you an overview of how such representations of data can be
used. Please note that in the TED Talk, David McCandless uses the term ‘data
visualisation’ a lot, in addition to the terms ‘infographic’ and ‘visualisation’. Infographics
are closely related to, but not quite the same as, data visualisations – the latter being ‘tool
[s] to interactively explore data’ (Cairo, 2014), while the former tend to be static
representations of data. However, it’s worth noting that the terms ‘infographic’ and ‘data
visualisation’ are often used interchangeably. You’ll read more about the distinction
between the two later.

Activity 1 Strengths and weaknesses

Allow about 45 minutes.

1. Watch infographics celebrity David McCandless’s TED Talk (2010), which

introduces data visualisation. The video lasts 18 minutes.
2. As you watch the video, make notes in the box below about the strengths and
weaknesses of infographics and data visualisations.

View at: youtube:5Zg-C8AAIGg

Provide your answer...

It is clear from the David McCandless TED Talk that infographics and data visualisations
can be beautiful and engaging ways to present research, as demonstrated by Figure 4
(which has a marketing, rather than an educational research, focus).

Figure 4 Broadband affordability. Oxford Internet Institute

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2 Visualising data

In the next section you’ll investigate how the expressive power of infographics can be
realised to help researchers compete for attention when disseminating research results.
You’ll also study the ways in which the power of infographics can be harnessed to
mislead, either intentionally or unintentionally.

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3 The power of infographics

3 The power of infographics

Infographics can be more eye-catching than the printed word, using images and colour to
attract the reader’s attention. For example:

● the brain can see images that last for just 13 milliseconds (Trafton, 2014)
● our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour (Jensen, 2008, p. 55)
● we can get the sense of a visual scene in less than one-tenth of a second (Semetko
and Scammell, 2012)
● 90 per cent of information transmitted to the brain is visual (Hyerle, 2000).

Another enormous strength of infographics, especially those for complex datasets, is that
it is easier to experience them non-linearly than with text. The viewer’s gaze can shift from
point to point, or rescale from overall view to a narrow focus.
Infographics have the potential to create an immediate and lasting impact in
communicating research results. They can also aid comprehension of a message, for
example, by presenting statistical analyses in a format accessible to non-specialists (if
accurately compiled). Perhaps, just as importantly, infographics draw on the techniques of
visual artists in their use of colour, shape and figurative content. As a visual art form, they
have the potential to affect our emotions in the same way that visual art can, heightening
the impact of the message they are intended to convey.
Finally, as already mentioned, infographics are very easy to share via social media.
Figure 5, an infographic depicting the plot lines of best-selling novels, shows that it’s
possible to create infographics out of almost any type of data. You can click to see a larger
version below, or on the Slow Journalism website.

Figure 5 Plot lines infographic. Christian Tate, www.christiantate.co.uk

We’ve already noted that infographics are closely related to, but not quite the same as,
data visualisations, and that the terms ‘infographic’ and ‘data visualisation’ are often used
interchangeably. While infographics present a static view of data, data visualisations are
designed to allow the viewer to apply filters to explore a subset of the available data. For
example, the ‘World inequality database on education’ (UNESCO, n.d.) shows the

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3 The power of infographics

powerful influence of circumstances such as wealth, gender, ethnicity and location on

people’s education and life opportunities. The visualisation draws on data from the Global
Education Monitoring Report (UNESCO, n.d.) and allows filtering by several indicators,
including by country. In addition, data visualisations sometimes allow chronological
changes to be tracked – for example, changes in primary-school attendance over time.
Infographics can achieve their expressive power through combinations of many different
elements. These two resources give an overview of the various components that can
appear in infographics and data visualisations.

● Periodic Table of Data Visualization Methods (Visual Literacy, n.d.)

● Introduction to Data Visualization: Visualization Types (Duke University Li-
braries, 2017)

In the next section you’ll explore ways of assessing the quality of infographics.

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4 Evaluating infographics

4 Evaluating infographics
While infographics can be an extremely effective research communication tool, the
communicative power of infographics can also be deliberately harnessed to deceive; for
example, by presenting a selective view of a dataset, designed to obscure or over-amplify
key research findings. The competition for attention that exists on the web often means
that research reporting – especially by journalists, but also by researchers seeking to
enhance their professional reputation – tends towards simple, dramatic stories.
The disadvantage of infographics mirrors their advantage – that they present a quickly
comprehensible picture of a subject, distanced not only from the raw data but also
(perhaps more importantly) from the process of inference/analysis by which that picture is
generated. This is why, when looking at any infographic, it is important to interrogate the
data interpretation process, which the infographic actually makes it harder to see.
In addition, even when a researcher is intending to accurately represent their research, a
disadvantage of infographics is that, although it is fairly easy to produce them, it is not so
easy to produce them well. As a consequence, the internet is replete with some truly awful
infographics masquerading as research reports – awful due to poor design, lack of
background information, inadequate explanation and deceptive or inaccurate represen-
tation of numerical research data.
The critical researcher therefore needs a suitable strategy for evaluating infographics – a
strategy that combines techniques for analysing any research with techniques more
commonly used when engaging with visual art.
In his article, ‘
The many-faced infographic: Brooklyn, elephants, and the visualization of data’, data
visualisation guru Alberto Cairo tells us that:

One of the keys to designing effective information graphics is to accept that

function constrains form. This means that, if your goal is to communicate well,
the visual shape you make your data adopt is not primarily a matter of aesthetic
preferences, but should depend on the questions readers may want to get
answered, or on the tasks they may wish to complete.
(Cairo, 2013)

4.1 Assessing the quality of infographics

A quick Google search will return many rubrics and checklists for assessing the quality of
an infographic. Common among them are the following evaluation criteria:

● Relevance of the infographic to any related research reports.

● The authority/credibility of the infographic author, or of any connected institution.
● Accuracy of the data. It is important that sources are listed for any data or knowledge
claims referred to in an infographic that reports research, as this allows you to cross
reference with the original data.
● Apparent purpose of the infographic and whether this is realised in its design.
● Tone of the infographic (e.g. humorous, cynical, neutral, serious) and whether this is
appropriate to its apparent purpose.

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4 Evaluating infographics

● Content of the infographic, including the use of charts, colour, text and images.
● Clarity of the infographic layout. Is it easy to follow? Typically, a good infographic
might start with broader claims or statements and present data that gradually
narrows in focus and adds more detail.
● Aesthetic considerations. How does the infographic present information? Is it visually
pleasing? Does it achieve an emotional effect that complements the message being
conveyed? Does the emotional effect actually contradict the apparent message?

Natalia Karbasova, a student on Alberto Cairo’s

Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization MOOC (which is no longer available
for study), has published some useful notes on the topic in her blog post ‘
How to evaluate infographics’. Drawing on Cairo’s MOOC, Karbasova suggests asking:

● Is this infographic really ‘functional’ in the sense of facilitating basic,

predictable tasks (comparing, relating variables, etc.)? If not, how could it
be improved?
● Does it tell a story? What are the most important or surprising points in the
data? Can we highlight them somehow? What do the data mean? What
kind of headlines, intro copy, and labels could it include to make it
meaningful for a broad audience?
● What other variables (if any) should be gathered/analyzed if we want to
give an accurate portrait of the topic the graphic covers? Could we go
beyond what is currently presented? Can we provide a better context for
the data?

(Karbasova, 2013)

The Junk Charts Trifecta Checkup (Fung, n.d.) offers a rather different way to critically
engage with infographics and data visualisations (Figure 6). It involves three evaluation
queries, for which the author, Kaiser Fung, proposes the answers should be one and the
same:

● What is the question?

● What does the data say?
● What does the visual say?

Figure 6 Junk charts: recycling chart junk as junk art. Kaiser Fung, http://junkcharts.
typepad.com/junk_charts/. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution
NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/
3.0/us/

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4 Evaluating infographics

4.2 Compiling your own infographics – evaluation

checklist

Figure 7 Data + design. © Infoactive. eBook licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike 4.0 Licence https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
In the following activity you will explore Data + Design(Infoactive and Donald W. Reynolds
Institute, n.d.) – a Creative Commons-licensed, downloadable, remixable and shareable
online textbook that is a great resource for advice on creating and evaluating infographics
and data visualisations. It is a collaborative work written by more than 50 authors and
includes chapters by the aforementioned Alberto Cairo.

Activity 2 Creating effective visualisations

Allow about 1 hour.

Read Chapter 17 ‘Perception deception’ (Djukic, n.d., pp. 217–40) and Chap-
ter 18 ‘Common visualization mistakes’ (Chang et al., pp. 242–61) of Data + Design.
These chapters can be found in the ‘Visualising data’ section of the book.
As you read, note:

● some of the ways in which an infographic can be made more impactful

● common errors to watch out for when consuming and preparing infographics and
data visualisations.

Provide your answer...

In the next activity you’ll draw on your reading of Data + Design to compile a checklist to
use when evaluating the accuracy and effectiveness of infographics and data
visualisations.

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4 Evaluating infographics

Activity 3 Devising your checklist

Allow about 30 minutes.

Spend about 30 minutes devising your own infographics–evaluation checklist. Base it

on the notes you made for Activity 2, and on your reading of the resources already
mentioned. Do feel free to include additional criteria of your own.
Feedback
You should now have a useful checklist to use when evaluating any infographics you
encounter, and when creating your own. If you’d like to read more about the design
principles applied to creating infographics, Kibar and Akkoyunlu’s paper ‘Fostering and
assessing infographic design for learning: the development of infographic design
criteria’ is a good place to start.

In the next activity you’ll use the checklist you produced in Activity 3 as the basis for
evaluating an infographic of your choice.

4.3 Applying the evaluation checklist

For this activity you’ll apply some of the skills needed by the ‘critical researcher’ when you
use the evaluation checklist that you developed in Activity 3. First though, you’ll search for
examples of great (and not so great) infographics related to educational-technology
research.

Activity 4 Being a critical researcher

Allow about 1 hour 30 minutes.

1. Conduct an internet search either for ‘educational technology infographics’ or for

infographics covering an education or training sector in which you’re interested. .
2. As you search, note any infographics that appear to be particularly effective or
appealing, and any that seem to be particularly poor. (You can record the web
addresses for all of these examples in the box below.)
3. Select one infographic on which to conduct an evaluation, either an example you
think is particularly effective or an infographic that you feel is flawed in some way.
4. Using your evaluation checklist from Activity 3, evaluate your chosen infographic
by giving it a score against each of your criteria. You should divide the total score
by the number of criteria to achieve a mean score for the infographic. You may
find it useful to look again at the two resources mentioned in section 3, which list
some of the typical components of infographics.

Provide your answer...

Feedback
The final score for your infographic will obviously depend on which infographic you’ve
chosen, and which criteria you applied in your evaluation. However, an infographic
scoring 5 across all criteria is likely to be a very successful one. An infographic scoring

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4 Evaluating infographics

3–4 is likely to be fairly effective but lacking in a few important areas. An infographic
scoring lower than this is likely to have some substantial defects.

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End-of-course quiz

End-of-course quiz
You’ll end your study of this short course with an End-of-course quiz designed to assess
your knowledge of some of the concepts covered.

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Conclusion

Conclusion
By now, you should have an appreciation of some of the key things to look out for when
evaluating infographics, and will have used your own checklist to critically assess an
infographic of your choice for its accuracy and effectiveness. The evaluation skills you’ve
developed should help you as a critical researcher to navigate the plethora of infographics
claiming to present research findings. They are also good preparation for creating your
own infographics.
At the time of writing, free tools for creating infographics included Easel.ly, Google Charts,
Infogr.am, Piktochart, Venngage, Visual.ly, and Vizualize.me, among others.
We can’t be certain these tools will still exist by the time you study this course. However, a
quick web search for ‘free infographics tools’ will help you to find up-to-date tools that are
available.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this short course and soon find an opportunity to apply the
knowledge and skills you’ve gained.
This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course
H819 The critical researcher: educational technology in practice.

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Keep on learning

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References
Cairo, A. (2013) ‘The many-faced infographic: Brooklyn, elephants, and the visualization
of data’, Peachpit, 25 November [Blog]. Available at
www.peachpit.com/ articles/ article.aspx?p=2153471 (Accessed 13 September 2016).
Cairo, A. (2014) ‘Infographics to explain, data visualizations to explore’, The Functional
Art, 16 March [Blog]. Available at

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References

www.thefunctionalart.com/ 2014/ 03/ infographics-to-reveal-visualizations.html (Accessed

8 March 2016).
Chang, K., Eyler-Werve, K. and Cairo, A. (n.d.) ‘Common visualization mistakes’, in
Infoactive and Donald W. Reynolds Institute (eds) Data + Design: A Simple Introduction to
Preparing and Visualizing Information [Online]. Available at
https://orm-atlas2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/13a07b19e01a397d8855c0463d52f454.
pdf (Accessed 11 January 2017), pp. 242–61.
Djukic, M. (n.d.) ‘Perception deception’, in Infoactive and Donald W. Reynolds Institute
(eds) Data + Design: A Simple Introduction to Preparing and Visualizing Information
[Online]. Available at
https://orm-atlas2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/13a07b19e01a397d8855c0463d52f454.
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Acknowledgements
This free course was written by Leigh-Anne Perryman and reworked for OpenLearn by
Simon Ball.
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Acknowledgements

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Quiz:
Question 5: Hyerle, D. (2000) ‘Thinking maps: Visual tools for activating habits of mind’, in
Costa, A. L. and Kallick, B. (eds) Activating and engaging habits of mind, Alexandria, VA,
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, pp. 46–58.
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