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Drawing Effective Technical Diagrams

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As architects, we spend a good bit of time trying to get a very complicated set of ideas communicated in a clear, consistent, and understandable manner.  A simple diagram with a clear story can be very compelling.  A poor diagram can actively sink your efforts. 

A great example of a poor diagram appeared on the front page of the New York Times a few days ago.  This horrible diagram attempts to describe the complexity of the US Afghanistan Policy in the war we are fighting there.  The diagram didn’t have a clear message, metaphor, or organizational method that allowed key observations to be drawn from it.  (copied below)

About the only decision that this diagram supports is “simplify this.”  But there is no clear way recommendation on how to do that, the areas that need the focus first, or even the rationale for the complexity that has emerged. 

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So what can we do?  We live in a complex space.  We’ve all delivered complex diagrams before.

I got a note from another architect this morning pointing to a masters thesis produced in 2006 by Noah Iliinsky at the University of Washington.  This masters thesis, titled Generation of Complex Diagrams: How to Make Lasagna Instead of Spaghetti , provides a great deal of good information on how to tell if your diagram is any good, and how to develop a better diagram for the audience at hand.

Direct link to PDF: https://digital.lib.washington.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1773/3100/iliinsky_complex_diagrams.pdf?sequence=1

Reference: https://digital.lib.washington.edu/xmlui/handle/1773/3100

It’s a good paper, and worth a look for any architect wanting to learn to improve the kinds of diagrams that they produce, and best guide the decisions that need to be made.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2010
    There's only one thing to say to you Nick http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ :-)

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 07, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2010
    Hello Randolpho, I completely agree that a diagram that illustrates complexity can, of itself, be useful.   However, we would also want it to be rigorous so that we are not adding detail just for the sake of creating a diagram that is, in fact, an illusion of complexity. I did not see the rigor. There is clearly excellent analysis involved.  But the diagram should illustrate that level of careful analysis and directive illustration that allows the viewer to not only understand the situation but also IMPROVE it.   As I mentioned above, the illustration may have been an effective part of a larger discussion, where this step was useful for showing a larger picture, and where the careful directive illustrations were made in another slide.  Hard to say. --- Nick

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2010
    The comment has been removed