As Adam Richardson of Frog Design has pointed out, we are moving from an information age into a recommendation age. What does this mean? As we are faced with making choices from an ever increasing array of options, we seek trusted sources to help us make better decisions. The information itself is simply becoming too complex, too vast to parse on our own, which is why the opinion of a third party to navigate these complexities is becoming more and more important.
Companies who started as data aggregators are now becoming data interpreters. It is no longer enough to sell the data itself—in fact, the customer expectation is often that data be made available at no cost. Instead, what customers are looking for is expert analysis by the companies they trust.
There are new opportunities that arise with this shift. Companies are now faced with the challenge of not only interpreting their information, but also communicating it to their customer base. In a recommendation age, the communications themselves become vital to continuing to build trust and brand loyalty. The way in which interpreted information is presented can become a competitive advantage when it is turned into proprietary offerings which satisfy customers both on a functional and experiential level.
Information visualization is a case in point. As I have mentioned earlier, visualization is inherently subjective, from the choice of data to its expression. Choices are made throughout the entire process, and there is always an intent driving them. In a recommendation age, information design plays the important role of providing supporting evidence for the recommendation. With so much information to parse, visualization is becoming increasingly necessary for communicating the attributes and behaviors of large datasets. And being a rhetorical device, it carries the potential to build trust with the recipient.
“In a recommendation age, information design plays the important role of providing supporting evidence for the recommendation.”
Yup. Which is probably why “trust” needs to be embedded inside the communication protocols tehmselves.
Great blog, Christian…