Organising your ideas
“Words are not your enemy. Complex thoughts are not your enemy. Confusion is. Don't confuse your audience.” Amanda Hobbs
“To find signals in data, we must learn to reduce the noise - not just the noise that resides in the data, but also the noise that resides in us. It is nearly impossible for noisy minds to perceive anything but noise in data.” Stephen Few
Now that we’ve considered our audience, we move on to think about our ideas. Clarity around our main ideas, and our key messages, are essential to effective communication.
This step should not be rushed. Just as we see in financial modelling, the temptation is to start building charts and graphs straight away. You need a plan. Once you know what you want to say, you’ll find the visual design phase much easier and quicker to work through.