“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” — Herbert A. Simon, Nobel Laureate

Whether you are a public speaker, a data visualization expert, or a writer of articles or reports, too much of a good thing can be detrimental to your purpose. How often have you been on the receiving end of a report, a lecture or presentation where you thought, “Stop! Just give me the facts. I don’t need all of this extra information.”

The biggest problem with information overload is that it distracts and diminishes from your purpose, and marginalizes your intended results with your audience or users. You might have had good intentions, but giving too much information, even if it’s useful information, might cause your audience to miss the point, draw wrong conclusions, or turn their attention elsewhere. People can only process so much information at one time. You will lose them if you exceed their capacity.

Tips To Avoid Losing Your Audience

  1. Give your client or audience what they want to know; no more. Find out what is essential or critical to them. Focus on those things. Of course, you can make the offer of providing additional detailed information, but only if they are interested and ask for it.

2. Regarding visualization, keep the written page or video screen clean and simple. Don’t force the eye to search for essential information. If someone cannot easily find the critical information being presented, your design or presentation is wrong.

  1. Make sure the information being presented fits the audience. For example, you wouldn’t focus on how much fuel a fleet of trucks uses in a year to an audience who is only concerned with performing maintenance on the fleet of trucks. Give the pertinent information to the appropriate consumer of the information.

  2. Use stories or scenarios to apply the data or information. Our brains are wired to process and remember stories much easier than facts or numbers. When you introduce or present information, support it with a story or apply it with a scenario. In your lecture or talk, apply the information with a story that will be of interest to your audience. When you present information visually (video screen, dashboard, etc.) use a scenario as to how they might use the information presented to them. This will show them your thought process and reasoning, which can be very helpful in getting your audience to connect to the purpose of the information and understand it more quickly.

Consider this: keeping things clean and simple shows command of the content. Too much detail and verbosity can show the opposite.

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