Randy Krum's Blog, page 10

Smartwatch Showdown: Apple Watch vs. Fitbit Versa

In the world of smartwatches, the two big contenders are the Apple Watch and the Fitbit Versa. The Smartwatch Showdown infographic from The Watchstrap is very timely with recent news that Google has just acquired Fitbit.

In the world of wearable gadgets, smartwatches are all the rage at the moment. The smartwatch market is growing by the day, and new and improved devices are constantly being released. This means that picking the right smartwatch can be a real head-scratcher. To help you choose the right device for your needs, we’ve compared two of the hottest smartwatches on the market: the Apple Watch Series 4 and Fitbit Versa!

If you want to find out which of these devices came on top in the end, don’t miss the comprehensive infographic below!

First, this is a great use of infographics in content marketing! The Watchstrap is an online retailer of watch bands, and the infographic is a comparison design without being a sales pitch. It draws in traffic by providing valuable information, which build credibility for their brand.

There are a handful of things I didn’t like about the design itself that could be easily improved to make this a better infographic design:

Too much text. I realize there isn’t much data to work with, but they need to cut down the text in the infographic. Paragraphs of explanation don’t belong in the infographic, they belong on the landing page. The infographic should be short and draw in readers to the website if they want to learn more.

The scale is wrong in the Size & Design section of the infographic. The dimensions of the Apple Watch are larger, but the graphic illustration on the page is smaller. The illustrations should be visually correct to scale.

Eliminate any word wrap when possible. There are a number of list points that have one hanging word wrapping to a second line. This could be avoided by shortening the text or just widening the text box. There’s room in the design without wrapping some of these words.

The URL in the footer should link to the infographic landing page, not the home page of the company site.

Copyright or Creative Commons license is completely missing.

Don’t obscure the source by only listing the home page URL. What’s the link to the research data?

Star Wars Size Comparison Video

The galaxy far far away has items both big and small. The Star Wars Size Comparison Video created by MetaBallStudios brings droids, people and planets together from the Star Wars movies (episode I to VIII, Rogue One and Solo). See how your favorites size up against each other.

Comparison of many things from the Star Wars movies. Only movies from episode I to VIII, Rogue One and Solo. Obviously not everything appears, only the most representative.

Providing scale and context to your audience is one of the key tenets of data visualization, and this video does a fantastic job of giving you the context of the size of everything in the Star Wars universe.

Found on Gizmodo.com.

Top Construction Projects in the World

Highlighting some of humanity’s biggest construction achievements is the 10 of the Top Construction Projects in the World informational infographic from 53 Quantum.

Human societies have always looked to build the biggest and best monuments to their ingenuity, resources and craftsmanship. From the Empire State Building, to the Eiffel Tower, and the Great Pyramids of Giza to the Great Wall of China, we’ve always looked to build the biggest and best. Mind blowing historic building projects now litter travel-minded folks bucket lists everywhere, and they make up a huge part of the historic tapestry.

But it’s 2019 now. We need to talk about the Burj Khalifas and Libyan Irrigation projects of the world. For the first time in history, there are societies wealthy, powerful, and most importantly, cohesive enough to build spectacularly huge projects. By working together with our geographical neighbours, we’ve been able to give the world some truly unbelievable, innovative projects. The International Space Station leaps to mind as a collaboration between nations.

With so many stunning projects continually on the go around the planet, we at 53 Quantum thought it’d be an idea to put together a quick infographic of ten of the biggest and best. Of course, there’ll be examples we missed and things we left off, because how do you compare a massive railway restoration and modernisation with a super skyscraper project? Apples and oranges!

Nevertheless, here are ten of the world’s most impressive construction projects.

Although I like the infographic, this design falls short in a few areas.

Where’s the Data Visualization? The biggest missed opportunity in this design is that the data isn’t visualized. You want readers to understand how big or how expensive these projects were, you need a visualization that puts that into context!

Nice illustrations, but that isn’t enough. Most of the impact of the size and scale of these projects is lost because it’s buried in the text.

A map of the locations would be nice.

Is there any logic to the order of these projects in the infographic? Readers will look through the list from top-to-bottom in order. They’re not sorted by cost or on a timeline.

Thanks to David for submitting the link!

What Does Big Tech Know About You? Basically Everything

Big tech companies have been spying on us for years. This knowledge isn’t new information, but what could be surprising is exactly to what extent each company does it. Security Baron categories what data six of the biggest tech companies collect from you in The Data Big Companies Have On You infographic, and these are just the ones they admit to collecting on their own privacy pages!

The seemingly endless stream of Facebook privacy scandals of late—including the latest involving users as young as 13 years old—may have you questioning how much the social network and other tech giants actually know about you.

The folks at Security Baron examined the privacy policies of Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft and put together a handy infographic showing the types of data each company admits to collecting. For Facebook and others, data is money. But just how much these tech giants actually know about you might be surprising.

As you can see in the infographic below, Facebook is particularly data-hungry, even gathering information about your work, income level, race, religion, political views, and the ads you click in addition to more commonly collected data points such as your phone number, email address, location, and the type of devices you use.

"Facebook is unusually aggressive," Security Baron pointed out. "This data can be exploited by advertisers and (hopefully not nefarious) others."

Twitter, in comparison, is "comparatively hands-off," the site notes. The microblogging service, for instance, doesn't collect your name, gender, or birthday (Facebook, Google, and Microsoft all do), but Twitter does know your phone number, email address, time zone, what videos you watch, and more.

Google and Microsoft, meanwhile, are the other big players when it comes to collecting data.

"With Cortana listening in and Gmail seeing all of your emails, the ubiquitous nature of Google and Microsoft gives them access to an uncomfortably large amount of your information," Security Baron wrote.

Check out the full infographic below to see what Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft may know about you. For tips on securing your digital privacy, check our story, "Online Data Protection 101: Don't Let Big Tech Get Rich Off Your Info.

This is a fairly simple infographic design using a comparison table. I think the use of the icons is particularly effective showing which of Google’s or Microsoft’s apps are collecting the data.

Although the types of data are identified down the left side, I wish there was a way to identify the more sensitive types of data.

Original article can be found at https://www.pcmag.com/

Google Ranking Factors 2020: Facts and Myths

Google’s ranking algorithm continues to get more and more complex, and the Ranking Factors 2020: Facts and Myths infographic from Link-Assistant tries to break through some of the misinformation that’s out there.

It seems a little while ago that Google hinted at having 200+ ranking factors. Though in fact, it happened in the year of 2009, and we are heading to 2020 now.

Google has drastically evolved over the past ten years. Today, neural matching — an AI-based method — processes about  30% of all searches , and Google can recognize concepts behind keywords. They have introduced  RankBrain , mobile-first indexing, and HTTPS. As we need to adapt to changes and find ways to get atop of SERPs, the topic of ranking factors remains as fresh as ever.

So let's have a look at what ranking factors to consider in 2020, and what ranking myths to leave behind.

I have mixed feelings about this infographics design:

Good:

It’s a concise summary of very complex information that’s laid out in the more detailed, full article.

The infographic is a handy reference sheet and great for use in social media as promotion for the article.

Clean arrangement that’s easy to read from top-to-bottom

Bad:

Almost all text.

Not that there’s much data that could have been visualized with charts, but some visual design elements would have made the infographic easier to read and more enticing to readers.

Text URL to the article! When the infographic gets shared, how are readers supposed to find the article when it’s not linked??? Put it in the footer on the infographic!

14 Visual Content Marketing Statistics to Know for 2019

Online marketing with visual content continues to grow and drive tons of traffic. The team at Venngage gathered together the latest data in the 14 Visual Content Marketing Statistics to Know for 2019 infographic and built it using their own tool.

From Nadya Khoja at Venngage:

Two years ago I asked 300 different online marketers to help me figure out how they were using visual content as part of their marketing strategies in 2016 and their predictions for 2017.

This year I wanted to see if there were any changes in how marketers were creating visuals, and what kind of content engagement they were seeing.

I also asked a couple of additional questions to see how the use of various visual formats impacted their blogging strategies.

Conclusion:

The data says it all–visual content isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Not only are more brands leveraging the use for of visuals for various social media platforms, but there is a lot of added benefit when it comes to SEO and organic rankings as well, particularly in Google’s image search results.

And of course, creating engaging visual content is a surefire way to resonate with your audience and communicate your ideas more effectively.

There are a few things to unravel here:

It’s good survey data, but take it with a grain of salt. Venngage is a visual design tool, sharing data about visual content marketing.

The infographic is a fantastic format to summarize the survey results and use in social media to draw in readers to the full article.

The infographic is built using Venngage, so it’s also a great way to showcase what their design tool is capable of. In fact, clicking on the infographic gives you the opportunity to use this design as a template for designing your own infographic.

Sections 5 & 10 are disappointing visually. There are no data visualizations, just a bunch of percentage values shown in text.

I’m not a fan of the bright color scheme, and it’s visually distracting from highlighting insights in the data.

The article still references 2018 data, even though the infographic has been updated with newer data from 2019.

Social Media Trends of 2019

Gathering together a bunch of the latest research, Awario has summarized the latest data-backed Social Media Trends of 2019

Every aspect of digital marketing requires you to be constantly up-to-date. Social media marketing is not an exception. Actually, scratch that: social media marketing is the very segment where you have to be the definition of trendy.

To know what’s happening in social marketing and what’s about to happen, you need data that answers questions such as “Which tactics are used the most?”, “Which tactics are being planned?”, “Which tools are being developed?”, and so on.

So, we dived in the latest research and created an infographic with the most recent social media marketing data.

Knowing that an infographic image will be shared independently of any text posted along with it, here are a a few things missing from this infographic design that would help:

The source logo! Nowhere on the infographic does it mention that it comes from Awario

The infographic source link. How can readers find the original infographic on Awario’s site?

A copyright or Creative Commons license

What’s going on with this micro-influencer data visualization? That larger circle is WAY MORE than 6.7 times larger!

NCAA 2018 - Basketball Shot Visualisation

The team at ItoWorld has animated the data from the 2018 NCAA Basketball season into this fun Basketball Shot Visualization video of all of the made baskets and where on the court the shots were taken.

Fun Friday #Sportsviz! My evenings have taken me down another sports-related rabbit hole, this time using basketball shot data from the NCAA.

This visualisation shows all 'scored' points colour coded by the value of the point and visualised over the timespan of a game (many games here!) Data is filtered for just 2018 games, the whole dataset has roughly 4million points from dates back to 2013.

Design-wise the arcs aren't meant to be accurate traces of the shot, just an abstract view of where the point was scored from. Finally, an accumulating hex grid shows the overall pattern of shots taken. 
This was a lot of fun to make! All made using out Ito World design tools and the dataset was pulled from here: console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/ncaa-bb-public/ncaa-basketball

I appreciate the link to the data source!

Link found by Column Five Media

MacBook Setup Essentials for College Students

It’s Back To School time of year, and if you’re a college student with a new MacBook, or a parent setting up a new MacBook, the MacBook Setup Essentials for College Students infographic is for you. These are my personal Best Practice suggestions for setting up a MacBook for college students. (and I’d love to hear your tips in the comments)

MacBook are very popular with college students, but a little planning and configuration is required for the best experience. A student moving away to college might be the first time they have full control over their own computing experience: installing apps, protecting their privacy, creating good passwords, avoiding viruses & malware, and backing up their data.

These are my suggestions for setting up a MacBook, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro for any college student to simplify their computing experience.

I tend to be the Apple tech support for my family and friends, and this year I’m sending my own son away to college. Whether you are new to Apple computers, or an experienced Apple power user, these tips will help you with the initial MacBook setup for any college student going away.

NOTE: Most of these tips are good for any MacBook user, but I’ve tailored them specific to college students.

Unlike many of my other infographic designs, this one doesn’t have any numeric data to work with. It’s a How-To informative infographic with step-by-step instructions and suggestions. That makes it a little more text-heavy than I normally like, but in this case I felt it was appropriate.

Neil & Buzz Go For A Walk

Neil & Buzz Go For A Walk is an interactive, scrolling Data Adventure, designed by RJ Andrews, data storyteller and author of Info We Trust. It documents their activities and visualizes the radio transmissions during their 2+ hour space walk in 1969. A great project in honor to the 50th anniversary of the space walk!

It is best on a big screen like a tablet or monitor (show up with a tiny screen: get a tiny experience).

NEIL AND BUZZ was motivated by a realization: I had no idea what happened on the Apollo 11 moonwalk beyond Neil’s ONE SMALL STEP and that iconic flag photo. How many moonwalks were there? Just one. How long were they out there? About two hours. How far did they explore? An area about as big as a baseball diamond. What exactly did they do?

To answer these questions I dove into a wealth of NASA resources. Almost immediately I was struck with a the vision of a scrolly tour through moonwalk highlights. While superficially hand illustrated, the project's chief planning documents include a 3D model, layered map, and detailed timeline of the Moonwalk. Read the design essay to learn more about the making of this data story. -RJ Andrews

The conversation bubble visualization under the illustration took me a minute to understand.

Each column is a two-minute block of time, and each bubble represents the length of time someone was broadcasting a radio transmission. Above, only the major portion of the radio conversation is visualized in the style of modern text message bubbles above, and those are color-coded to the speaker.

Color distinguishes Neil and Buzz’s action and dialog. Commander Neil Armstrong received red as homage to the red commander stripes worn on future Apollo missions. Buzz patriotically balances with blue. Mike Collins, orbiting above, got yellow gold for his cameo, filling out the primary palette.

The bubbles below are color-coded to match the text bubbles above. Any radio transmissions that were skipped remain in gray, but when you reach the end, all of the bubbles are fully colored to complete the visualization.

Check out RJ’s complete Design Essay on what it took to develop this design, and you can follow RJ on Twitter @infowetrust