Over the past couple of weeks, we've been brainstorming ideas about how to make the site more useful. The most interesting idea we came up with was to add infographics to comparison grids.
Why Infographics?
Large volumes of numbers in a space can make it hard to relate to data unless you are a subject matter expert, making it meaningless to most people. An Infographic however, allows the communication of complex information quickly and clearly. Good examples include sparklines in use by stock market analysts to display the range of value activity for a target corporation in a duration, giving traders the ability to scan larger amounts of information faster than before.
Infographics don't replace the need for spreadsheets and tables, but they do make the data they represent easier to comprehend and share.
The same goes for Consumer Notebook. We are very proud of our comparison grids, and giving users the ability to create their own comparison is a pleasure. Yet we recognize that Infographics are a more attractive way to display information then our beloved tool.
What Consumer Notebook is doing with Infographics
Our plan is to feature a new comparison grid each week, and create an Infographic for that grid. We'll build the Infographic based off the information you place in the grid, and then share it with the world. You can see what we plan to do by taking a look at Audrey's Demystifying the Tablet Offerings comparison grid:
Demystifying the Tablet Offerings
In this case, Audrey made this comparison grid and the associated infographic. As we stated earlier in this post; in the future, we plan to honor the best comparison grids our users make to create infographics. If your grid is selected for an Infographic we'll do the following:
- Create an infographic and put it at the top of your comparison grid.
- Give you the highly demanded Infographic badge.
- Feature it in our blog.