The Hockey Stick

Another example of conditioned eye movement is the way audiences perceive and react to information. Through long experience with graphs and charts , businesspeople are accustomed to respond to what is known as the hockey stick , which expresses positive results moving upward to the right. A trend sloping in the downward direction implies negative results, and is therefore a counterintuitive movement.

If you were creating a graph to compare your company's results (sales, profits, product performance, or customers) against those of your competition, would you show it using bars like those in Figure 8.8?

Figure 8.8. The reverse hockey stick, going downward.

I hope not. Instead, arrange the bars as shown in Figure 8.9, upward and to the right. The hockey stick now expresses rising action. Furthermore, the bars end with your company name. By placing your company name at the final, climactic point, you not only tacitly take a superior position, it also becomes the last word your audience will see and remember.

Figure 8.9. The natural hockey stick, upward and to the right.

Unfortunately, many presenters, as well as many professional graphic artists , design their bar charts counter to these psychological implications. Figure 8.10 is a reproduction of an actual newspaper advertisement, doctored slightly to protect the guilty (we've used the fictitious bank name "Comet").

Figure 8.10. A violation of the hockey stick rule.

Comet wanted to brag about its leading market share over all its competitors in corporate debt underwriting . While Comet was proud of its achievement, its advertising designers set up the bars with movement downward rather than upward, counterintuitive to positive results.

Figure 8.11 shows how Comet's ad should have been depicted.

Figure 8.11. Follow the rising action.

Subtle? Yes, but

The stylistic points presented in this chapter may strike you as picky. "Oh, come on," you might say. "The members of my audience aren't graphic artists or designers. Will anyone really notice if I arrange the bars in the graph in reverse order or stack the letters in the vertical label?"

Maybe not; maybe not consciously. But our cultural conditioning to react to visual cues is very deep and powerful; so much so that, even when your audiences don't consciously recognize such design flaws, they respond to them with a sense of unease, uncertainty, or dislike. They may not realize what's bothering them; at most, they might think, "Those slides look a little odd," or "There's something here that's not quite right."

Is this a serious problem? It can be. Remember, chances are good that your persuasive effort will be competing against powerful opposing forces, ranging from your direct competitors to the subtler forces of indifference, apathy, and inattention. It's easy for anyone to doubt your expertise, to question your motives, to be distracted, or simply to lose interest. You can't afford to overlook any factor that might influence your audience, no matter how subtle it may appear.

You can't afford to overlook any factor that might influence your audience, no matter how subtle it may appear.

Persuading your audience to respond to your call to action is almost always an uphill battle. Why make it harder, even ten percent harder, by designing graphics that work against your message? Make your graphics work for you.