Broken: CNN election graphic

From top-to-bottom:

- There should be a picture of the outline of the state and probably a mini-map of it's location within the U.S. Although we all immediately recognize that Connecticut is *a* state, it takes a while to process *which* state.

- The word: "Moderates" has no context. Who are the moderates?

- The top three candidates are listed, but there is at least one other republican candidates and there may be other options on their polls. Clearly, 62 + 18 + 5 does not equal 100!

- The relative size of each bar is wrong. The Romney bar should be almost four times the size of the Huckabee bar.

- The most important words in the entire screencap are "CNN Exit Poll". If these are not actual election results, then this information needs to be more prominent.

- The first CNN banner contains conflicting information. If McCain has "won" Connecticut, then the standings of two other candidates are not news.

- The second banner is difficult to read. I think it shows the status of Georgia, which apparently has elections for both parties on this day. But only 5% of the votes are in, so how could Obama be "checked"? And again, if the numbers don't add up, does that mean 4% are voting for Mike Gravel???

Yes, designing anything is hard!

Re: Robby Slaughter's points

- Connecticut is clearly identified. State outline is LESS clear to me than what is used here. Mini-map is a possible enhancement, but it's certainly not a requirement.

- No context for "moderates." We have to remember that CNN didn't just post a slide...there would have been an audio component. To say there is no context is to jump to a conclusion based on insufficient data.

- Listing of only top three candidates. The bottom third of the screen was cycling through information. If one was watching this and waited a few seconds, CNN presented the fourth-place finisher's information.

- Relative size of bars: valid point.

- Size of the "CNN Exit Poll" label: I think it would be safe to say that CNN thought that the information being presented about moderates was far more important than the source of the information. That you would disagree doesn't make that aspect "broken."

- The winner of a primary is not the sole piece of news from that primary. There is no "conflicting information."

- And the checkmark indicates a network projection, using actual votes, exit polls, and human judgment. You may disagree with that judgment, but that doesn't make it "broken."

I appreciate reading about things that are "broken." But I don't particularly enjoy tearing something apart for the sake of tearing it apart.

I think we're all missing the point here. This screen is a total jumble of mixed information presented in inconsistent formats.

Television is an audio+video format:
*Tell* me (audio) what the news is.
*Show* me (video) either the people who are talking, or some graphic that helps to convey their point -- a chart, footage of the event, etc.

There's no reason for so much TV screen real estate to be occupied by words when there's an audio portion of the broadcast. I can't imagine the CNN viewer whose experience was improved by seeing inconclusive Georgia results, a headline conveying what the broadcasters are currently talking about, a not-to-scale bar graph, and various logos and titles... all at the same time.

Taking a single graph from a TV broadcast and stripping it of all context and audio is not quite a fair way to critique a graph.

I think Robby brought up a lot of legitimate issues. But if nothing else, then just one question: why is the "5%" bar half the size of "18%"?

There were plenty of other good charts available that night - the pie charts worked well, for example. I just don't understand how this obviously erroneous chart made it onto national network TV.

>>I just don't understand how this obviously erroneous chart made it onto national network TV.

Perhaps the producers view this information as ephemeral--electronic news media doesn't have the permanence of the printed page. As such, perhaps editing standards are geared toward getting it out there first, and not geared to getting it right.

For starters, there's a giant fingerprint on the screen.

Above and beyond the proportions of the red bar graphs being inaccurate, attaching them to the white rectangles makes it too likely someone just glancing will take the white+red rectangle to be the size of each bar, rather than the red rectangle itself. Putting a space between the red and white would have made this less likely for people to misunderstand.

"There's no reason for so much TV screen real estate to be occupied by words when there's an audio portion of the broadcast. I can't imagine the CNN viewer whose experience was improved by seeing inconclusive Georgia results, a headline conveying what the broadcasters are currently talking about, a not-to-scale bar graph, and various logos and titles... all at the same time."

The reason is because all of that information is there for different viewers in different situations.

The CNN logo is there so that anyone who sees it knows it's from CNN. Now, this would be obvious to someone who just changed their TV to that channel and already knew it was CNN, but if a clip is posted on YouTube or if a screenshot is posted to a blog, CNN wants to have their logo on it.

A lot of the text information is there so that people who can't hear the sound know what's going on. A surprisingly large amount of viewers for a channel like CNN are people in public places like airports or bars. In a lot of those situations, the sound is turned off or is too low to hear for most of the viewers. This is also why there is a lot of redundant visual information on sports broadcasts, because they are viewed in the same situations.

The seemingly unrelated text information is there so that someone can turn on CNN whenever they want and see the latest news. In the screenshot, they are showing the exit poll results in the top part, and the overall primary results at the bottom. That way they can provide content for someone who is watching the whole election coverage and wants to see all of the details (like exit poll results), and someone who just turned on CNN to see "who won".

The downside of all this is that when you watch CNN, you have to ignore certain parts of the screen, because they weren't designed to all be viewed at once. Think about it like the dashboard of your car, there are a lot of gauges, and usually you don't use them all at once, but there's a reason for each one being there.