Tag Archives: Audience

Minimum Daily Requirements:

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First in a series on

“Responsible Social Media Citizenship”

For solid research on what you accept as truth, you need to learn:

• who it is that is telling you something,

• why they are telling it to you,

• and what do those who disagree have to say.

This is the basics—the minimum—on learning to be accurately informed.

Real truth is nothing to be afraid of.

Why this series? Why now?

While watching a YouTube video that made some good points about comparing the viewpoints and biases of various news articles and resources, it was so obvious to me that even though the video narrator thought they were coming at it from an unbiased direction and that they were just simply presenting facts, they were not. The fact of the matter is that no one presents information in an entirely bias-free manner. Of course trying to do so is better than trying to manipulate with misinformation, disinformation, or non-information (see “Why is ID important?”). Lying, scamming, tricking, and intentionally misleading people to prevent them from learning accurate information is abhorrent, no matter how common we find it around us. Being aware of the difference between these bad and manipulative communication methods is going to be a starting point when it comes to keeping those who curate and share information on a path of well-supported research.

However, the responsibility rests on the person reading the website, app, blog, news article, or YouTube video to sieve through the information glut and test what is presented to you. To be a responsible social media citizen, you must take care in hearing and reading to test whether the communication deserves your precious trust in believing it—and especially—whether to pass it on to others.

And how will I know?

The answer to that question is what the series is about. As stated above, the bare minimum for being a responsible research-citizen has to do with how you approach some bit of information. Ask yourself those questions: “Who is telling me this?” “Why are they telling me?” and very importantly, “What do the people who disagree think?” If you can’t ascertain the answers to these questions, then you have no business sharing them with others. Even if you are a person who already wants to agree with some bit of information you are hearing or reading, you still need to understand all three of these things to be an effective and honest researcher.

It is all a part of loving the truth—which is why so many people say they want to share some informational tidbit they have read or heard: they want the truth to get out about something. However, if you don’t actually do the preparation to know and validate the truth of something before you believe it and share it with others, how much of a lover of truth are you? Not much; more than likely, you are a lover of what you already think, whether it is substantiated by accurate information or not.

People who think they are committed to getting the truth out hate to be thought of as liars, which is often what they call people who disagree with them. However, truth be told, when people pass on things that are not true, that is lying and it is liars who do it.

Design for Art or Clarity?

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When creating images for digital or print, an important distinction must be made regarding our reasons for creating the image in the first place. A painter or photographer might create art for personal or artistic expression alone. But if you are creating images to communicate a message, market a product, or promote an action, then whatever distracts or confuses from your message or purpose should be avoided. The whole basis of this Information Design blog is to help us to understand the distinctions needed for using the abundantly available technologies of digital creation. A typical user of creative apps and software is not automatically prepared for user- or audience-centeredness just by learning the technology of making an image. Too often, the images created by novices appeal to the designer’s (or a similar someone’s) taste, preferences, or biases, rather than to what is meaningful to the audience. Unless the creator is the sole audience for it, an image needs to have accessibility, in other words, user-centeredness, at its core.

In this ID blog, I have already touched on purpose, audience, and clarity of message several times. Those posts are good reminders that the ever more easily accessed software tools and apps for creating and editing images for our everyday and business use must be seen in terms of who the image is for, what are we trying to communicate, and will the message get through the image.

Too often, we get distracted and start asking ourselves or our friends how we like a color, shape, placement, or font, without thinking about what an intended user will think about it or how it will look to them. Sometimes we don’t even ask, “Who is my audience?” or “Why am I making this?”

To illustrate this point: take color-blindness.

How do we design for color blind users?

There are several different kinds of †color blindness, but the most common ones relate to how the viewer sees red and green. *There are about 330 million men in the world (12%) and almost 20 million women (0.5%) with color blindness. How often do we think about how well this fairly large demographic sees our images?

It is fairly simple to check our images to see how they will look to people with color blindness. A number of browser apps allow you to upload your image to check how it would appear to a person with one of the several types. Any image saved to a JPG or PNG can be uploaded §for free to check that the image is clear or at least acceptably close to how you hoped it would look. Perhaps upon checking, some color changes might improve the image for the color blind without requiring a complete design makeover. Making those changes might make a big difference to the appearance of your image for the user. You’re unlikely to completely avoid every issue, since several types of color blindness seem to have almost the opposite visual effect from others. However, giving it a try to be sure that your font color, for example, has the proper contrast to a background color will make a big difference if you want someone to read your action button and buy your product.

Another accessibility issue to consider, and here color blindness can also provide a good example, is that before you even choose the colors for your image or brand, you should see how those colors look to people with color blindness. I have used the great free app, Coolers.co, to select brand colors and colors for images. This wonderful app allows you to generate whole color palettes with the Hex code and other numerical identifiers, and to export the palette image for your use. I would encourage anyone to run their palette through the Coolers’ colorblindness viewer, which can be found at the top menu once you have created a palette (i.e., the colorblindness viewer is found by clicking the icon that looks like a pair of glasses, see Figure 1), from there, you will be able to view the colors from various color blindness types.

Figure 1: With Coolors.co see your brand palette through the eyes of those with color blindness.

For example, one might create a call-to-action button using two brand colors. The color distinctiveness required for the user to read what action was requested might be obscured for a person who is color blind so that they are unable to take the action you are hoping to encourage. The text might be readable, but the colors might be “yucky looking” for your user and discourage them from your site. As you can see from the following pictures (Figure 2) from the Healthline blog, what seems like a nice colorful set of surfboards will appear very differently to a colorblind eye.

Figure 2: Normal vs protanopia (If you have protanopia, you’re “red-blind,” which makes red colors look greener.)

It is unlikely that you can create images perfectly viewable to every user, particularly with color blindness. Too often, though, image creators don’t do any research about this issue and only design for their own tastes and preferences—yes, their own biases—which makes their image designs fall short of the mark when it comes to good design and user-centeredness. Artful design might please one’s own sense of artiness, but will not necessarily reach the audience for your intended message.

* According to the World population statistics of male and female, https://countrymeters.info/en/World

† See also the very detailed article on Color blindedness on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness

§ Here is one such browser app where you can check how your image appears for various types of color blindness. Or, Google, “How can I tell how my image looks to the color blind?” to find more options.