User Interfarce

If you were to ask me my five favorite comedy troupes of all time, I’d probably name the Muppets, the Kids in the Hall, Backpack Picnic, Monty Python, and the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Congress.

This is just a quick post today, but I wanted to follow up on something I wrote yesterday about user interfaces.

The Washington Post has a copy of the flowchart used by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) explaining his opposition to the Democratic Health Care Plan.  Look, I’ve only taken one class on graphic design, but that’s pretty much textbook “confusing” and “scary.”  It’s actually kind of ingenious – by using different fonts, different shapes, confusing-to-follow arrows, and a color scheme best described as “Eegah!”, the Republicans have made their case that the health care plan will result in scary, confusing… charts, apparently.

Then you take the flowchart put out by the New Republic which is similarly complicated, but less scary, showing the current state of health care in America, and while it’s not designed to be scary, it certainly is complicated.

Which brings us to graphic designer Robert Palmer, of California.  Palmer took the healthcare plan, and tried to create a flowchart that presented the information about the Health Care Plan in a way that’s intended to educate, rather than confuse.

Now, whether or not the health care plan is a good idea is beyond the scope of this blog.  But it illustrates a point about how important it is to present information in a way that those who need to understand it, can easily understand it.