On Ice Cream Thrones, And Other Made-Up Words

Starting today, whenever you get ice cream on what you used to call an ice cream cone, I would like you to call it an "ice cream throne" instead. I have invented a new word. Or at least a new way of saying something, if not really a new word.

You're welcome.

And you're thinking, "thanks for nothing!" Because we don't need a new word for ice cream cones, do we?

Data visualization is a language. So when we come up with a new way to depict data, we are creating new "visual words".

William Playfair invented a new way to show data over time. That "visual word" never existed before. And people had to learn the language of that thing - just like we learn a new word in any other language.

Even when you're not creating a new visualization, but maybe introducing your audience to a more esoteric visualization like a sankey diagram, you're introducing new visual vocabulary to them.

If you were delivering a speech to third graders, you probably wouldn't use the word antidisestablishmentarianism even once, because that vocabulary might be too advanced. But if you did, I bet you would explain it to them and not just casually drop it in without any context.

The next time you're creating a data visualization, just think of it like vocabulary. Is it a simple word or a big fancy word or maybe even a completely new word? Use that as your guide to help you decide how much context-setting and explanation you might need to provide your audience to help them understand it.

And, by the way, if you're creating something new, remember that the magic of learning a language is repetition. So if your audience is going to see that sankey diagram over and over and over again, it will become very familiar to them over time. They will learn it and start to use it themselves, if it's valuable. (Yes, it needs to be valuable - it needs to actually be an improvement over any existing words.)

Sure, "it could have been a bar chart" might be a response. But remember what Amanda Cox famously said:

There's a strand of the data viz world that argues that everything could be a bar chart. That's possibly true but also possibly a world without joy.

So...on that note...I'm going to go get an ice cream throne! That will make me more joyful, for sure.

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