Some time ago I watched a PBS Frontline documentary called the Card Game. It is an interesting program to see how creative bankers design complex credit card services that seem very attractive, but with hidden and expensive fees. I receive offers of these kind 2 or 3 times a week.

The consequences of these now popular practices are related to the recent financial outbreak in United States. This is an example of service design that instead of satisfying human needs, take advantage of them to enhance the profits. The old model of banking charged fees for use of services and interests for credit services. At the end of the 20th century the business model turned into free use of services and zero percent interest (at least in the first year of service) but with drastic penalties for overdraft and late payments.

An essential element of this model has been the creation of visual messages consisting of high hierarchy information of the free services and the low hierarchy information of the severe penalties. Then, this visual information uses the principles of human-centered design for profits instead of human needs. There are more vulnerable populations such as functional illiterates that more usually do not process low hierarchy information and make more mistakes tracking money balances. Indeed, people that do not control well their balances pay the fees that keep the system viable.

This case allows an understanding of critical challenges for visual communication designers in satisfying human needs. Human-centered design can be a fallacy in visual communication design where the client need usually is more about hiding rather than displaying clear information.

In this post I note how politics can teach designers about message content.

This is elections year in my country, Colombia, which has suffered of corruption for long time. Traditional groups of politicians have controlled significant number of the votes that give them power to define the next president. 8 years ago, current president Alvaro Uribe won the elections with an unprecedented portion of opinion votes because he delivered a strong and simple message: security. People were tired of guerrilla and voted for him. 4 years ago he won again because he showed good results in security. Uribe’s parties became the “new” traditional and, sadly, people have seen the persistence of corruption and illegality.

Today, the 2 major runners for president have an interesting contrast of message: simple and complex. Juan M Santos, former head of defense, belongs to Uribe’s party and his message is simple: “because going back isn’t an option” referring mainly to security. It is basically a contemporary political marketing strategy. The other runner, Antanas Mockus, former Bogotá major, has a more complex message that is difficult to summarize. He argues that all citizens have to be legal, from families to government administrators. He plans a large educative intervention in social and citizenship competencies. Although it is complex, it seems to be clear for opinion votes that transparency could be the way to go. Lately, the survey trends have shown a decreasing vote intention for the Santos’s simple approach and an increasing intention for the Mockus’ complex approach.

Because past Uribe’s simple message was successful and current Mockus complex message might be, there is no a best way to deliver a message. I’ve seen a trend in design and other areas of life for simplicity that not always applies. Although Mockus’ ideas are complex, they need to be complex. Besides, Mockus uses well-crafted and powerful metaphors that have entered in many people’s mind. We’ll see soon who wins between simple and complex messages.

To learn more about current elections: http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16015299&fsrc=rss

The video below is a documentary about Bogotá that shows how Mockus uses metaphors to explain complex concepts.

I just received an email this week about the triangle of life, wich explains what is the smartest way to locate oneself in case of an earthquake. Although the visual information was not designed by a professional designer (I guess… and hope!), it is a very effective result.

Para mostrale a louis

Click in the image to enlarge:

These are two good examples of information design in audiovisual format. The first above es one the Sprint ads (cellphone service), it might be difficult for us “humans” to process the statistics but the goal is persuasion and the designer wants to show us how reliable, fast, and popular is the service, not to make information understandable at all. The ad is beautiful and very dynamic, which is great and enjoyable.

The other example below is the last video clip of the Story of Stuff. I love it because with very simple graphs they explain complex concepts. In audiovisual information, audio is part of the tools available to solve information presentation and the oral explanation of the presenter helps a lot.



Both clips are rich in rhetoric tropes, one of the design tools in which I am very interested. I think that the first one for TV teaches us that short persuasion is a powerful tool. Sprint wants to sell, but how can we use this persuasion tools for social change? The second one can be the answer, but I wonder if people stay passive that long.

PS. Gui Bosiepe is from who I heard first the concept of audiovisual rhetoric and you can read it here