Jeff Bezos once said, “Humans are unbelievably data efficient. You don’t have to drive 1 million miles to drive a car, but the way we teach a self-driving car, you have to drive a million miles.”
During my 15 years as VP of Digital Media at Amazon, I recall several instances when Jeff sought to apply this insight.
Most company’s metrics reports use a variety of visual representations of data. While I’m sure there are cases where metrics are better understood with different visualization methods, this creativity results in cognitive overload for the report’s audience in most cases. Each new table or chart requires time to orient and interpret the results.
Over time, we determined that the cognitive overload wasn’t worth the theoretical benefits of varied chart and table formats. Instead, we took the approach that the priority was to reduce cognitive load and increase the ability to gain information about each metric rapidly. We hypothesized that, with proper visualization formats, we could create a report that enabled the Executive team to scroll through hundreds of metrics in less than one hour while gaining valuable insights and clarity on what parts of the operation were on track and off track.
We employed this thinking when building the Amazon Weekly Business Review report. See an example on our website to learn more: https://lnkd.in/g48RaZ3V
Do you use this report format in your company?
Do you have a better method or format at your company?
Let us know in the comments.
