Design Choices

ACCTG 351C Communication and Analysis of Financial Information for Accountants

Mike Vaishnav

Effective Written and Oral

Communication

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• Understand how to

effectively write a business

letter and memo.

• Understand key writing

concepts.

• Be able to communicate

technical accounting

concepts.

Objective

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Storytelling with Data

▪ We are not naturally good about storytelling with data

▪ Communication should be fast, clear and crisp. Some people will have natural gift on storytelling or explaining the matters.

▪ No one teaches how to tell story, it is natural.

How you will learn and tell stories with facts?

▪ Understand the context

▪ Choose the appropriate visual display

▪ Eliminate the clutters

▪ Clarification and focus on facts with proper data to support your story

▪ Focus where you want to be with your stories

▪ Think like a decisionmaker

▪ Good to go for google but site your references where possible and clarify. People can figure it out whether it is your presentation vs others

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The Importance of Written Communication

▪ Essential in modern business world

▪ Allows communication with non-accounting/finance professionals

▪ Many forms of communication:

• Engagement letters

• Opinion letters

• Management commentary

▪ Efficiency; conciseness

▪ Helps to define goals and identify and understand problems and solutions with out confusion

▪ Helps in building trust, credibility and integrity

▪ Creates good audit trail

And a Good Method

▪ Placing data in appropriate context for assessing cause and effect

▪ Create data in excel charts, sometimes it is good, could be overwhelming too

▪ Focus on your audience attention

▪ Articulate your unique point of view and covey what’s at stake

▪ Making quantitative comparisons or reference case studies, where applicable

▪ Considering alternative explanations

▪ Choosing an effective visual and avoid clutter (think like a designer)

▪ Assessment of possible errors in the numbers reported in graphic

▪ Do not copy as ethics are very important and you have to go long way. Do not

cheat. Some of people in business are longer than you so they can figure out

whether it is your work or copied work

▪ When you have to write report, you may get mental blocks so keep clear mind

▪ Tell a story

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The Importance of Context

▪ Distinction between Exploratory vs Explanatory Analysis

- Exploratory analysis is what you do to understand the data and figure out

what might be noteworthy or interesting to highlight to others by digging thru

data, relationship and trends, where data comes from, structured or

unstructured, gaps, trends and detail

- Explanatory analysis meaning you have a specific thing you want to explain

and Specific things you want to tell

▪ Too often people thinks that it is ok to show exploratory analysis (simply present

the data) vs explanatory analysis (taking time to turn the data into information

that can be consumed by an audience)

▪ It is very tempting to show your audience that everything, as evidence of your

work you have done vs providing information your audience want to know.

▪ You need to focus on importance of context by providing explanatory analysis

with clear and crisp communications

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Explanatory Analysis

▪ Who:

- Understanding your audience

- Narrow your target audience and focus on their requirements and structure your communications accordingly

- How do you engage them

- Who is the decision maker?

- What do you need them to do with the information

- What bias your audience - to support or resistant on message

- Is it your first time presentation or you are an established presenter

- How well do they know you as a subject matter expert

▪ What:

- What action you need your audience to know or to do?

- Whether communication is relevant for them?

- When to suggest or recommend

- What is the purpose of the communication. Focus on subject matter

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Explanatory Analysis

▪ How

- How to communicate is highly dependent on amount of control you have over your audience, how they will take information and level of detail need to provide

- Write your speaking notes with important points and try to remember important talking points

- Articulate concisely so they can understand

- Practice before presentation.

- Maintain confidence level

- No long presentation with repetitive items. Must be complete sentence

- How do we strengthen case with available data and audience familiarity with data

- Tone of communication: depends on message you would like to convey

- Must articulate your unique point of view and convey what’s at stake

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▪ Impression

• Confidence

• Professionalism

• Persuasion

• Compelling and provocative

• Efficiency

▪ Clarity

• Very complex information

• Non-technical audience

▪ Accuracy

• Reduce user frustration due to errors and inconsistencies

▪ Productivity

• Sound development

• Streamline use

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Message Delivery is Nine Tenths

In Short….

▪ Superior methods of data design are more likely to

produce truthful, credible and precise findings

▪ The difference between excellent analysis and a faulty

one can sometimes have momentous consequences

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Some Rules of Engagement

▪ Data needs to assess cause and effect – this is at the basis of

analytical thinking

▪ Data needs to answer the question – compared with what?

• That is, quantitative comparisons should be made

▪ Alternative explanations and outliers should be considered and

explained

▪ Data error should be assessed and reviewed

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CRISC

CGEIT

CISM

CISA

SOME NOT SO OBVIOUS BASICS

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CRISC

CGEIT

CISM

CISA

COLOR – WHY IT MATTERS

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Color and Style Matter

Can you tell what’s going on here?

More straightforward

visual

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The Provocation of Color

▪ Very strong colors

• Helpful when used sparingly

• Unbearable if used with a heavy hand

▪ Know when to use bright colors

• To draw attention

• Usually mean something bad happened

▪ Know when to use subtle colors

• To quietly draw the eye to certain parts of the analysis

• Delineate one data display from another

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The Provocation of Color

▪ Subtle colors

• Calming effect of subtle colors – pale yellow, navy blue

• Use colors that are most prevalent in nature – grays, subtle greens and blues, yellow, browns

• These natural colors should be the baseline

▪ Stronger colors

• Use for small highlights to specific data points

• Achieves an overall effect of calm restraint

• Provides a professional visual quality

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CRISC

CGEIT

CISM

CISA

AND A WORD – OR TWO – ABOUT…WORDS

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Consider….

Joseph Albers wrote:

“Ophthalmology has disclosed that the more the

letters are differentiated from each other, the

easier the reading.”

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What the….Font?

▪ Font should match the culture of the

organization and be tailored to the audience

• Traditional - Times New Roman, Ariel • Old School and overused, perhaps, but still appropriate for

certain audiences

• More modern choices: Garamond, Gill Sans, Calibri, Cambria,

• Less appealing choices - Comic Sans, Papyrus • Lack professional polish and may not bode well with more

conservative audiences

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CRISC

CGEIT

CISM

CISA

MORE THAN MERE WORDS CAN EXPRESS

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Your Audience Won’t Be As Into the Data as You Are

Seriously? Easy to see that C, or B, would be a good choice

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Pictures Speak Volumes – When Done Well

▪ Use a proper layout

• Charts and graphs should be wider than they are tall

▪ rectangular in shape

▪ Choose graphs that are:

• Clear

• Simple in design

• Appropriate for the question being asked/answered

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What’s the Objective?

The main question we should strive to answer

through a combination of charts/graphs

accompanied by words is:

Compared with What?

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Efficiency: Make the Decision Easy

No quick decision will be made on this graph…

Very easy to see the growth is in the Bahamas…

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CRISC

CGEIT

CISM

CISA

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

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5 Rules of Data Visualization

1. Ensure Data is optimized

2. Select visualization tool your audience is comfortable with

3. Consider the layout

4. Optimize the user experience

5. Adapt the visualization to the delivery channel

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In Short

▪ Information displays should be:

• Documentary

• Comparative

• Casual and Explanatory

• Quantified

• Multivariate

• Exploratory and Skeptical

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Still True in Today’s Cyber World

Tufte:

“Graphical elegance is often found in simplicity of

design and complexity of data.”

How do we achieve this?

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Combine Words and Pictures

▪ Charts and graphs should be accompanied by:

• Title

• Legends

• Written explanations

▪ Integration increases information density

▪ All that we need to know is presented on one

page

▪ Avoids flipping back and forth between words and

graphics which can be distracting and confusing

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Closing Thoughts

▪ There are right ways and wrong ways present

information to your business partners

• Some displays reveal the truth and displays that do

not

▪ Analytical displays should answer the question

at hand

• Directly and in as straightforward manner as possible

▪ Quality of design is a reflection of intellectual

clarity and strength

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Fun with Visualization

▪ http://www.businessinsider.com/the-27-worst-

charts-of-all-time-2013-6#

▪ http://www.perceptualedge.com/

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CRISC

CGEIT

CISM

CISA

CHALLENGER

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What Happened

▪ Recap

• An analysis was completed by the engineers

• Engineers recommended not to launch the Challenger

• Recommendation was right

• It was ignored by senior management

▪ At the time it was not seen as convincing enough

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WHY?

The data presented failed to effectively answer

the question:

Compared with what?

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No “Good Method” Employed

▪ Analysis Failures:

• No focus on the link between temperature and O-ring

failure

• Engineers clouded the analysis with too much

extraneous and irrelevant information

• Users of the analysis would have been forced to come

to grips with all of this data before even being able to

consider the core question

• All of this muddied the waters and inhibited clarity of

cause and effect

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You’re saying…..wait, what are you saying?

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Analysis Failures

▪ Used a mass of acronyms such as SRM

• Used up to 3 different names for a particular rocket

▪ A NASA number,

▪ Thiokel’s number,

▪ Launch date

• Too many descriptions were used for O-ring damage

▪ Erosion,

▪ Soot,

▪ Depth,

▪ Location

• Colloquial words were used that might not have significant meaning for the users of the charts

▪ What exactly is “blow by”?

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An Improved Visual

▪ Better depictions:

• Simple scatter plot

• Showing O-ring damage against temperature

• List showing

▪ Flights,

▪ Dates,

▪ Erosion incidents

▪ Temperature

▪ A clear display of evidence would have spoken

for itself

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Maybe Something That Looked Like….

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