WEBVTT

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[Morse code beeps]
[Whoosh]

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[Helicopter rotor]

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Hi. My name is Annika Thomas, and I'm a fellow
with the AeroAstro Communication

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Lab at MIT, and today we're going to be
talking about figure design.

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By the end of our lesson,
you should be able to understand

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the purpose of figures
in technical communication.

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You will learn criteria for designing

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clear and effective figures,

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and you should be able
to apply best practices to evaluate

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and improve a figure.

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Some criteria
for success for your figures is

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they should communicate a clear,
one sentence, main message.

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They provide evidence
that directly supports that message.

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They minimize visual noise
that can distract from that message.

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They should be easy to interpret

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without having additional explanation
needed.

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So what is the purpose of a figure?

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Figures communicate a takeaway message.

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The evidence that supports that message

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and the figures
job is not just to show data,

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but also to show what you learned from it.

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We're not just showing
that quantitative data that you collected,

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we're also really encapsulating whatever
that takeaway message is from the figure.

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The first thing you should do
is analyze the context of your figure.

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This includes why does our figure exist?

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What's the purpose of it?

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Who is our intended
audience for the figure?

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Is it a more technical audience
in a scientific paper,

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or maybe a more general audience
in a presentation?

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And where will that figure appear?

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In what setting?

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So figures
look different in different settings.

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Like I mentioned, in papers,

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we have self-contained figures
and informative captions.

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Posters have large readable figures

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that should be visible
and interpretable from a distance,

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and slides
in presentations have simplified figures

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that should be optimized
for quick comprehension.

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So you're going to want to decide
what the correct figure type is for you,

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based on the circumstance
in which you're sharing that information.

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Text, tables, and figures

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all communicate information differently.

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Figures can serve different purposes.

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Photos give us realism and scale,
understanding of experimental setups,

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and things that we can actually physically
see and interpret.

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Illustrations
give us structure and function,

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and graphs provide us with

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trends, comparisons, and processes.

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And on this slide,
you'll see three different ways in which

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we can communicate the same information
using different figure types

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including a table, text,

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and an actual figure on an X-Y chart.

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So depending on the circumstance,
we might choose

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one of these different figure types
to communicate this information.

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So a certain type of

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figure that we might be
including is a plot.

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And you want to choose the correct plot
design as well.

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So the plot type should match
what you want to show with that figure.

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Distributions are well shown by histograms
and box plots.

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Trends over time are most commonly shown
using line plots.

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Correlations can be shown
using scatter plots,

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And you always want to plot your data

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before summarizing it.

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An important concept in figure

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design is signal versus noise.

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Signal is the message
that you want the audience to see,

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while noise is anything that distracts
from that message.

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Some common sources of noise in figures

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include too much data in your figure,

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using poor plot choices,
so selecting the wrong type of plot

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based on the the message that you want
to communicate with your audience,

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and sometimes including excessive visual

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elements can distract
from that main message.

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And on this slide we have a good example
of signal versus noise in a pie chart.

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On the left side we have pretty small text
a bunch of labels

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and kind of a wordy caption.

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versus on the right side,
we really streamline this pie

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chart into a key takeaway message.

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Another important thing
to think about while designing

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your figures is accessibility
in figure design.

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Your figures should be understandable
to you all audience members.

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Some best practices for this include

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don't rely on color alone in order

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to communicate a message,

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you should use high contrast
and readable fonts.

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And in addition to your figure caption,

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you should also include
alt text to describe the figures.

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Now we're going to go

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ahead and take these concepts
into an actual figure

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that you're working on with an activity
where you evaluate and revise a figure.

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So go ahead and choose
a figure that you are currently using

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or plan to use for a paper, poster,
presentation, etc.

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and answer the questions
detailed in the activity.

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[Alien spaceship beeps]

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Now by the end of this lesson,

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you should be able to articulate
the main message of a figure.

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You should be able to evaluate a figures

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context,
audience, and signal to noise ratio.

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And you should be able to identify
concrete changes

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that would improve clarity, accessibility,
and interpretability of your figures.

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Thanks for watching.

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[Alien spaceship beeps]