This presentation slide titled “Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict” lists factors that are destabilizing Iraq. This index has been a staple of internal United States Central Command — the military command that oversees the Iraq war — briefings for most of this year.
What are the odds that this mess of a slide makes it into Edward Tufte’s next book?
Some links for Central Command…
PowerPoint Does Rocket Science—and Better Techniques for Technical Reports [Edward Tufte]
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint [Guy Kawasaki]
What is good PowerPoint design? [Presentation Zen]
Update: Tufte posted this slide at his site and called it “especially lousy.” [tx Bob] And a commenter there offered this analysis:
The slide is largely (enitrely?) data-free: a series of qualitative assertions, that masquerades as quantitative analysis. What is the “Index of Civil Conflict (Assessed)? ” Are “ROUTINE,” “IRREGULAR,” “SIGNIFICANT,” “CRITICAL” parameters on a continuum, or unrelated descriptors? If so, why are they coded in colors that suggest a progression)? What does “I&W” mean? Why is the slide framed with color gradients? Why is everything bold (or all-caps)? Is an up arrow increased sectarian conflict, or less sectarian conflict which indicates an improved situation? What are the numbers behind “unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict” etc.?
NB
on 01 Nov 06What is it we say about people who make the same mistakes over and over and over again?
Jake Ingman
on 01 Nov 06It’s possible (but unlikely) that they are making these slides intentionally impossible to comprehend, in an attempt to mask how badly things are going.
Maybe when things genuinely take a turn for the better, we’ll see a nice Tufte-esque illustration that just screams “we’re doing better, really, look!”.
I’m picturing some sparklines and beautifully set serif type.
Anonymous
on 01 Nov 06Having worked for the government, I need to share two thoughts.
First, for the most part, people that work in the military work hard and are paid little. Giving them grief over the look of a chart seems so small—they have real issues to worry about. I find this post to be extremely petty. And for the most part, the people of the military really do care about making our country better for everybody. And they also care about making other countries better too.
Second, the chart’s symbols use color and shape to help indicate conflict levels. One could of used just color—but for black & white photocopying purposes it’s important to use shapes. (I would also include a number in the shape to be triply sure of reading the charts correctly.)
ML
on 01 Nov 06Giving them grief over the look of a chart seems so small—they have real issues to worry about. I find this post to be extremely petty. And for the most part, the people of the military really do care about making our country better for everybody.
The quality of a powerpoint slide may not seem like a “real issue”...until you read something like this. In scenarios like this, effective information design can be a key to assessing threat levels (and ineffective info design can be downright dangerous.).
And of course people in the military care about making our country better. Who ever said different?
Anonymous Coward
on 01 Nov 06So sick of the strawman argument bullshit exhibited by Anonymous above.
Matt Grommes
on 01 Nov 06I have two comments.
One: it’s easy to bitch. Show me how you would have shown this information to the audience and I will listen to what you have to say about this slide. This is a complicated issue and I for one think they did an admirable job of showing what they wanted to show. Maybe I would have put the ‘Index of Civil Conflict’ on a different slide but that’s probably not what you’re talking about. Even with just the main content of the ‘Key Reads’ and ‘Additional Indicators’ this would have been wordy but what would you do with it? It’s a list of factors, each of which needs to be assessed in terms of the others.
Two: I hardly ever see the audience of a presentation used as a factor of whether a slide or presentation is successful. People talk about all slides as if they were presented to thousands of people in a huge auditorium. This slide was probably used in a talks to a small room of people who could ask questions and get things explained in detail.
I like this blog a lot but you guys are big on picking on people and light on solutions. We know you guys are all about “less” and all that but if you’re just going to say “These people don’t know how to do less” without ever saying “Here’s how I would have done this with less” all you’re doing is blowharding.
aliotsy
on 01 Nov 06It’s possible (but unlikely) that they are making these slides intentionally impossible to comprehend, in an attempt to mask how badly things are going.
Eh … it says “violence at all-time high, spreading geographically.” in bold type in a big, red-outlined box at the bottom. I don’t think they’re “masking” anything, good or bad.
Jeremiah
on 01 Nov 06This intrigues me. How would 37signals design this slide? I’m sifting through Tufte’s book right now (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) trying to figure out how I would show it.
Could 37s put their money where their mouth is?
Mike
on 01 Nov 06I think a good exercise (perhaps a Design Decisions post) would be for SvN to take the PowerPoint slide and apply a little Getting Real to it so we can see a better method of portraying the information.
Luis
on 01 Nov 06Here’s an idea. Stop the war and there won’t be any need for such slides and conversations about them.
Seems simple, I know.
Does anyone have a slide showing what I mean?
Bob Monsour
on 01 Nov 06Tufte has already added this to the Ask E.T. thread titled “PowerPoint and Military Intelligence”. It can be found here:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000fv&topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E%2eT%2e
It’s near the end.
Patrick McLeod
on 01 Nov 06Matt wrote:
I’d say:
Just because a problem is complicated doesn’t mean that you have to represent it in a noisy fashion, i.e. the slide above. In my mind, one of the first steps in communicating a complicated matter in an informative manner is to make it digestable. By “digestable” I mean your audience should be able to view your presentation and ask you substantive questions about the complicated matter you are briefing and not about what Slide A meant or what that tiny font on the third item from the top says in the key.
So, in the spirit of providing alternatives based on criticism, here's what I would do: First, they should ditch the "Central Command" bar on the left and the abbreviated title bar at the top of the page. If you're doing the briefing or being briefed, you know who's doing it and what it's about. If you're going to use a horizontal title, don't abbreviate it. Use the space that is freed up by removing those to un-pack the pertinent information in the slide. Second, move the summary at the bottom to the top, where it effectively takes the place of the title. That way anyone who just wants a summary gets it right off the bat. Every audience, no matter how important the topic, has disinterested members who just want the CliffsNotes. Give it to 'em. For points three through five, I would change the orientation and labelling on the index of civil conflict, change the orientation of the key indicators and change the orientation of the additional indicators. I'd suggesting making one key (or legend) for the entire slide. I'm cramming all these into one because I'd be typing for the rest of my lunch break if I were to go into detail. Note here that I'm not trying to run down whomever did this slide; they, like most folks, probably did as they were taught to do and as they see others creating slides doing. There's always strong institutional influence in behaviors like creating presentations.Beerzie
on 01 Nov 06Perhaps if it were drawn up in crayon, the people in the White House would comprehend it.
Everett
on 01 Nov 06This is one of those pieces of information that might be more simply designed just as text.
There are four categories of issue: Routine, Irregular, Significant, and Critical. Simply arroange each of the itemized points under the appropriate heading. “Key reads” are worth calling out with emphasis, but there’s no need to point out “Additional Indicators”
The heatmap Index of Civil Conflict is actually pretty readable, though it could be redrawn to be slightly less cramped; a scale of green to firey red seems an appropriate way to get the reader’s attention. I wonder if there are other graphical ways of representing a trend from stability towards entropy?
Tony
on 01 Nov 06What’s interesting is that some of the “key indicators” represent unfortunate, but expected actions-like “Political/religious leaders increase public hostile rhetoric”-while the most critical issues are listed as merely “Additional Indicators” as if they are less important.
Which is worse, the fact that “unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict” is at expected levels, or that “low level violence” at a critical level? Shouldn’t any “critical” issue be promoted to a “Key Read”?
Anonymous
on 01 Nov 06Yes, the slide isn’t perfect. But some could say it is good. Maybe not great. Perhaps only okay. Whatever…
Let’s really ‘get real’. These slides are not presented on an overhead projector… They are printed and handed around… Discussed during sit-down meetings… Many minutes are spent on a specific page. Believe me, generals are not going to tell the design group to make the page really clean and pretty.
Agreed, bad design could lead to horrible consequences.
By the way, has anybody seen the charts from Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Gulf War (1991)? They are really pretty.
Chad Burt
on 01 Nov 06Do you have a link? That would be nice to compare.
Slightly off topic, its really surprising to me some of the powerpoints you see coming out of Washington. A hall of shame is really in order. Whether they are trying to hide or show information from the public, an information design department would really help the government’s PR. They certainly have the money.
Sam Leibowitz
on 01 Nov 06From the update: What does “I&W” mean?
From farther up: “This presentation slide titled “Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict” lists factors that are destabilizing Iraq. “
Gee, dunno.
With that said, I’m in the camp of people who thinks it’s ridiculous to complain about the design of the slides in light of what the language on the slides is designed to describe. For example, the critical issue, “Low level violence motivated by sectarian differences,” could also have been written as, “Sunnis and Shiites are kidnapping and torturing each other with power drills.”
But then, I tend to get worked up about stuff like that.
Michael Chui
on 01 Nov 06Perhaps the more relevant Presentation Zen articles on the subject are… PowerPoint printouts used for communicating battle plans? and PowerPointification of military briefings
Craig
on 01 Nov 06Wrong. Then it most definitely would be pegged at “chaos.”
brad
on 01 Nov 06I don’t think the design issue here has anything to do with aesthetics, it’s about communication. Does the slide effectively communicate what it’s trying to say? The most effective item on that slide is the Index of Civil Conflict graphic. They could put that on its own slide and describe all the other issues separately (and they should ditch all those little symbols except for the “changes since last week” arrows, which are useful). The critical items could be made to stand out using text formatting (make them bold or put asterisks around them).
An
on 01 Nov 06Conspicuously absent from the “factors that are destabilizing Iraq” are ….
The illegal occupying force.
I wonder how USCENTCOM managed to miss that one.
Jesus Fernandez
on 01 Nov 06I think the Index of Civil Conflict is probably the most useless thing on the slide. It is an imaginary axis with subjective points that offers no analysis on the situation other than the current situation being “worse” than a couple of arbitrary benchmarks. The rest of the slide already communicates that without muddling it with subjectivity.
Number lines are really poor at giving information about trends. This one leaves a lot of unanswered questions that are really important: Have things gotten suddenly worse in the last couple of weeks or has there been a continual degradation of the situation since the pre-Samarra checkpoint? Is the current situation poised to get better or worse, and if so how great is that expected to be?
Calling this an “Index” is misleading and dangerous – I don’t believe that the values represented have been calculated statistically, so they could very well be the opinion of the Powerpointer presented as fact. I’d love to see evidence to the contrary.
Considering reports that these PowerPoint slides are being used as the only documentation for this campaign I’d expect they would at least communicate important information clearly.
Chris Carter
on 01 Nov 06Please don’t make the mistake of:
1. Turning this slide into some kind of political motive confirmation (ie, look, we just knew things were terrible in Iraq or look, we just knew that the conflict wasn’t just US troops) 2. Trying to dictate information design in this situation.
It’s a single slide. From a classified military briefing. To a group of military commanders. This isn’t some infographic being published for public consumption, it’s a standard form being shown in a briefing to high level military commanders who actually work with this stuff every day.
This seems like an uncharacteristically political pot shot at our military administration.
Ross Patterson
on 01 Nov 06Of course, only Tufte can say what Tufte will like, but this seems like a pretty good graphic. It conveys some very criticial information very succintly and clearly – the thermometer says “things are pretty bad and getting worse, but they’re getting worse slowly and we’re still some distance away from total chaos”. It highlights significant information – “Low level violence …” is tagged with a red dingbat – and it doesn’t bury important information among minutiae.
On the other had, it uses a green dingbat for “routine”, while green is normally interpreted as “good”, and it varies the dingbats along two axes (color and shape) where a single axis would probably be clearer. It also uses a very odd scale – “routine”, “irregular”, “significant”, and “critical” don’t all sound like related terms (routine and irregular are frequency, significant and critical are severity).
Still, it’s not as bad as the NASA/Boeing slide that Tufte analyzed, not by a long shot.
ML
on 01 Nov 06This seems like an uncharacteristically political pot shot at our military administration.
This post points out ineffective information design. There’s no political commentary here at all.
Chris Carter
on 01 Nov 06Forgive me for allowing the ambiguity of the internet guide my reasoning. It’s the buzz of the comments both here and at Tufte’s site that give the discussion an air political charge.
Taken out of context, the slide does seem busy. But for one who has had to sit through numerous PP presentations (both civilian and military), this slide actually represents its information well. If you don’t know military jargon, then yes, this slide will be confusing. However, this slide wasn’t being presented to anyone but those who are most immersed in such jargon, and thus this particular piece of information design works well for the situation.
It comes down to context and audience, which I’d love to hear more from you guys on than just “this slide sucks”.
Alex Bunardzic
on 01 Nov 06brad wrote on 01 Nov 06:
You’ve nailed it! And the answer to your question is: but of course!
Look at the slide again. Isn’t it telling you that we’re dealing with a completely messed up situation? In that respect, it is one of the better slides I’ve seen. It speaks volumes. Loud and clear! Now if that’s not effective communication, I don’t know what is.
Or, as George Harrison of the Beatles fame once remarked: “If all the people in the world who own guns would just shoot themselves, we wouldn’t have any problems anymore.”
Khoi Vinh
on 01 Nov 06I’m sure this chart could have been better, but one thing that might mitigate its poorness is the idea that it was very likely preceded and followed by other slides that could have made this information more easily comprehensible.
MikeInAZ
on 02 Nov 06I know you guys don’t want this to become a political thread, but I have to post this:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/11/crime-of-exposing-truth-about-iraq.html
Now the Bush admin is looking at bringing charges against the NYTimes for “leaking” this chart because it shreds the propaganda coming out of the Whitehouse about how things are going great in Iraq.
Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you have to agree this just isn’t American. Criticizing your government or exposing facts is not treason.
Tim
on 02 Nov 06Show me how you would have shown this information to the audience and I will listen to what you have to say about this slide.
I always like this argument. “If you make better what you’re commenting on, you shouldn’t comment on it.”
Like:
“This car is dangerous and the engine catches on fire.” “I don’t see you building a safer car, so don’t complain.”
Chris Carter
on 02 Nov 06MikeInAZ – this slide was classified information which the NYTimes leaked (yet again). That’s illegal according to laws in our country that date back WAY before Bush and the people who don’t like him. The NYTimes is being investigated (as they have been in the past when they’ve leaked classified information) because of this. I doubt anything will happen though, they’ve let loose bigger stories than this. What IS interesting though, is that they doctored the image – they removed warnings regarding it’s classification.
Also, listed on this page:
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6836&Itemid=30
are actually some very GOOD examples of visualization of information from the same sources, these however are NOT classified or doctored.
Jeff
on 03 Nov 06I saw this slide and was hugely impressed by it. I think this is hugely ‘outside the box’ compared to what I would have expected from an establishment like the military. One big slider from bad -> good with graphical breakdowns of the influencing factors? That beats a craftily worded press conference any day.
And yeah, “masking”? What about the little arrow right next to the word “chaos”? Seems to me that they’re infinitely better aware of the scale of the mess we’re in.
Thomas Blood
on 06 Nov 06the commanders are usually very explicit about what they want , and how they want to see it. the amount of information that they have to process every day is staggering (these are 14-20 hour days every day for months on end) commanders see the same slides every day, and only care about the delta, which means most of these slides are displayed only long enough to say “next” the analysts who compile the data and update the slides also work 14-18 hours days, sifting through information and only high-lighting what the commander needs for the next 12 hour cycle most analysts are experts at their domain to be analyzed and do not have the time or inclination to worry about the best presentation layout, however desirable this might be
Having said all that, the ideal would be to develop templates that can meet the information needs of the audience while simplifying the analyst’s task of maintaining them. The average soldier/analyst knows how to use Powerpoint and Excel, so they make the best use of what they have in the limited amount of time available, while trying to stay alive. I doubt most of us would do much better under similar circumstances.
This discussion is closed.