Seduced by visuals or Why a picture is not always worth a thousand words
I have attended dozens upon dozens of professional presentations, IT related or not, and after a while I started noticing how concepts, processes or outcomes are always neatly packed in some good looking graph, diagram or table. Those graphs, diagrams or tables are partitioned in eye pleasing proportions and the illustrated concepts, processes or outcomes are firmly encased in them. Most of the time, there are three or four partitions, equal in size, because this is what the page would hold or it is easier to draw. The world is chaotic and hard to describe or illustrate. Sure a model of any kind needs to simplify things in order to communicate them. But I can't help wondering, isn't the author succumbing to the temptation of making order in the universe by collapsing stuff into those visuals, as opposed to writing a competent and complete text? Good text is more difficult to do, and even when it is good, fewer may be willing or able to follow it. Text does not grab attention