openSAP

Semantic Notation The Next Big Thing in BI?

Week 2 Unit 1
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to the second week of our openSAP course on semantic notation. Last
week, we have been introducing the need for semantic notation in business communication.

00:00:24

We have done this by comparing the situation in business communication to other disciplines.
For instance, to road signs, to electric engineering,

00:00:35

to sheet music, or to architecture. And then we have been looking at

00:00:44

the way we see on our charts and our tables in business communication. It's completely
different to the other disciplines

00:00:53

where they have a standard notation for sheet music and for road signs. And we show
everything differently.

00:01:02

It's on the personal taste of the one who designs a chart and a table what color he uses, what
chart type.

00:01:12

The choice of chart type even is his personal selection. And so we get a completely different
picture.

00:01:22

That's why we introduced a kind of semantic notation for business communication as well. And
we did it by introducing, for instance, a kind of pattern

00:01:35

for scenarios so that we see actual scenarios or we display actual scenarios in a solid way.

00:01:46

And the plan scenarios are displayed outlined. They still have to be filled up. And this only one
example. We have been talking about variances,

00:01:58

we have been talking about the styles for titles and so on. And we have explained that it is very
helpful to do that and if we do that

00:02:09

and we apply this semantic notation to all charts, to all tables, to all reports, to all
presentations, we get a similar look as we have in other disciplines.

00:02:21

We get a kind of visual language for business communication. This week, we will be talking
about a bigger picture.

00:02:34

Semantic notation is only a part of a comprehensive set of rules for the better design of reports
and presentations.

00:02:46

Actually, this bigger set of rules comprises seven steps. The seven steps of the SUCCESS
formula for IBCS.

00:02:59

Let me shortly go through this seven-step formula. It's about SAY, it's about UNIFY,
CONDENSE,

00:03:09

CHECK, EXPRESS, SIMPLIFY, and STRUCTURE. Forming together the acronym SUCCESS.

00:03:18

Now let me go through those seven steps one after the other and just briefly introducing it. We
will go into more detail in the next units.

00:03:32

Let's start with SAY. Every good report and every good presentation has a message.

00:03:40

That's why a report is called report. It has to report something. A report without a message is
actually no report.

00:03:50

So first we should know what message we want to convey to the audience of our report or to
the audience of our presentation.

00:03:59

And this message has to be interesting. Not a mundane message like the one in this cartoon

00:04:06

where he says, well, we have an export share of 25%. This is probably not so interesting.

00:04:15

It would be more interesting to compare those 25% to previous year or to plan or to see how it
developed in the last month or last years.

00:04:23

Or even to explain why it's 25% or to make suggestions on how to increase those 25% to 30%.
That would be interesting messages.

00:04:37

The second step is about giving our report and our presentation a good STRUCTURE. Once
we know what we want to convey,

00:04:46

we could start building a kind of, let's say, story line. A good story line will help to understand
that message.

00:04:56

And that good story line is not only visualized in tables that have probably a good structure. It's
also, let's say, a table of contents in a bigger report of, let's say, 10 or 15 pages.

00:05:11

Or it's a good structure of a dashboard. Just to go briefly into it, again with a cartoon,

00:05:18

there are three rules we will go into in the next unit. The first rule is that a good structure has
homogenous elements.

00:05:28

The second one is that they are non-overlapping. And the third one is that they are collectively
exhaustive.

00:05:37

Those two steps, the first steps of our SUCCESS formula, form a kind of conceptual rule.

00:05:47

The reason why is that we have not been talking about visual design yet. It's pure conceptual.

00:05:58

What do you want to convey and how do you structure it? So we call it the conceptual design
of a report or of a presentation.

00:06:08

Once we know what we want to tell the audience, now we can think about how to visualize it.

00:06:15

And that's the next step of our SUCCESS formula. We talk about how to EXPRESS our
message.

00:06:24

We choose the right way to visualize that. Choose a proper visualization. Let me explain it
again in a cartoon.

00:06:33

This might be a way to explain that the situation is critical, but you will not immediately
understand it.

00:06:43

It would be much better, visually, to do it this way. You see immediately that the situation is
critical

00:06:52

and you don't have to explain that picture with 1000 words. But the picture tells you more than
a 1000 words or is worth more than 1000 words.

00:07:07

Once we know what we want to tell and we have selected a proper visualization, then we
should avoid all superfluous things.

00:07:18

Everything visually from the design perspective that is superfluous and has no meaning, color
without a meaning, frame without a meaning, shadows, 3D,

00:07:30

all that visual stuff that probably looks nice but has no meaning should be avoided. Let's look
again at a cartoon.

00:07:42

You see nothing because there is too much clutter around those numbers. And if you remove
that clutter, you can immediately read the 7.17.

00:07:56

Once we have removed all that visual clutter... we do not remove the information. We remove
the visual clutter.

00:08:05

So we have gained space. And if we have gained space, the question is what are we doing
with that space?

00:08:11

Well, we can add information. We can add information that helps us to understand

00:08:18

the context around the message we want to convey. If you look at those two guys looking for a
way,

00:08:27

one has a map with the roads and the other one has a map with the cities, the places. If they
increase information density of the map

00:08:37

and have one map with the cities and the roads, it would be helpful to find the way.

00:08:44

That's what we are talking about when increasing information density. Once we have
increased the information density, we should check for visual integrity.

00:08:58

Visual integrity is mainly about scaling. We should never truncate access. We should never
have distorted visualization elements

00:09:09

because then the visual perception will not fit to the numbers. For instance, if you have a
column and this column is truncated,

00:09:21

then the height of that column does not correspond to the number lying behind. So the visual
perception of that column is just wrong.

00:09:32

And we should avoid that because then we do not visually perceive the right information. I
want to show you that with a pie chart.

00:09:43

Actually, we do not like pie charts too much. We will go into that later on. But if you want to
manipulate a pie chart, then you could do it like this.

00:09:52

Well. We have 5% market share. The number is 5. But what you visually perceive is much
more.

00:10:00

That's exactly about scaling, about checking the visual integrity. Those four visual steps I've
introduced,

00:10:13

from EXPRESS over SIMPLIFY and CONDENSE and CHECK, those four steps are called the
perceptual design steps. It's about perception.

00:10:24

And if you are interested in those perceptual design principles, then you probably find more by
reading

00:10:34

the books from, let's say, Edward Tufte is one of those guys. Or Gene Zelazny is another guy
who have invented a lot of rules about perceptual design.

00:10:47

By the way, I forgot to mention that on the structural design, it's probably worth to read the
lectures of Barbara Minto, the books from Barbara Minto.

00:11:00

They are called The Pyramid Principle. So now that we have the structural design steps and
we have the perceptual design steps,

00:11:09

now we talk again about semantic notation. We think that semantic notation is the missing link

00:11:18

to complete this SUCCESS formula for International Business Communication Standards. So

you'll remember we introduced this semantic design, for instance with

00:11:29

plan and actual and showing all that solid or outlined visualization elements. And if we add that
to the other rules, we get the complete picture

00:11:42

of a visual language of the International Business Communication Standards. So together, we

have the SUCCESS formula of the International Business Communication Standards.

00:11:56

In the next units, we will go through all those individual steps and see the individual rules in
more detail.

00:12:06

So hope to see you again in the next unit.

Week 2 Unit 2
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to the second unit of week 2 of our openSAP course. It is called
Conceptual Design.

00:00:21

Conceptual rules broken down into one part that covers SAY and the other one that covers
STRUCTURE.

00:00:29

I would like to start with the SAY, the message part of SUCCESS and give you a little overview
what we think is important

00:00:42

in messaging in reportings. And I would like to come back to this picture

00:00:47

what we have showed you in the benefit part of our course. And the messages really rely only
to reports.

00:00:58

These dashboards, statistics, tables, normally don't have messages. But in reports, we do
need a message. That's the definition of a report.

00:01:08

We report our messages, our ideas, our findings. And we have three levels of these
messages.

00:01:17

I would like to explain it with a little example. You see this column chart showing net sales and
profit from 2007 through 2015.

00:01:29

2015 is the last year with a negative profit, a loss of 53 million. And of course, we have a title.

00:01:42

So now I would like to tell you the three levels of these messages. The first one is we have a
simple statement. A detection.

00:01:52

We have an export of 25%. That's a detection. Then we might have the second level, which is
an explanation. Because something happened.

00:02:02

And the third level even on top would be a suggestion, a recommendation, what we should do
in order to change something or to achieve something.

00:02:12

So I would start with this detection. The detection could mean in 2015, we expect another 10
million less profit than 2014.

00:02:22

And what is very important here, this has to be highlighted. You see this? I have a little circle
around this -10 million

00:02:33

to underline what I have said. This is a detection. Detection level. Now we talk about the
explanation.

00:02:41

Explanation means we give a reason for what happened. Because the growth in Asia fails to
appear.

00:02:50

And again, we highlight this and show okay, there is 98 million which is missing. And the third
level would be a suggestion.

00:03:03

Say okay, we should do and arrange and launch the better project and this would lead to much
better profits beginning in 2016 and 2017.

00:03:19

You see here from here, beginning in 2016-2017 we will come back into the positive profit
zone.

00:03:31

Okay. This is a brief introduction into the message part, into the SAY part of SUCCESS. And
now I would like to go briefly into the very important part of STRUCTURE.

00:03:43

Structuring our content, structuring our presentation, giving the proper story line, is what
STRUCTURE is about.

00:03:54

When you look at this little table, and the first question is when you talk about structure in a list
and a table like this,

00:04:04

what is the rank order in this table? You think well, it might be here the share of sales. No, it is
not.

00:04:16

Then you look at the variance compared to last year. No, it's not. Then you think well it might
be in alphabetic order. No, it's not.

00:04:25

Then you think it might be historic order. Then you see no, it can't be because there's Others
here. So now we ask what is the reason for this ranking in this table? It is difficult to
understand.

00:04:39

This is a not perfect example of structuring a table. Next example is this dashboard.

00:04:51

You see two structure issues here. On the lower level, you see the Top 4 Markets, the Top 4
Products,

00:05:00

and the Top 4 Sales Channels. Perfect. Market, products, sales channel. No overlap, on the
same level, clear. This is okay.

00:05:12

It's a little angel here. But when I look at what the tabs up here say, Country, Sales Analysis,
and By Sales Person.

00:05:22

This is completely different. It's not on the same level. It's overlapping. So this is not an
example of a good structure.

00:05:31

To make this more clear, I would come back to the picture that Juergen showed us yesterday
about the principles of structure. There are three basic rules.

00:05:44

We are coming back to this Fresh Fruit stand. When you look at this basket here of Golden
Delicious,

00:05:54

this is not homogenous. Because there is not only apples in there. So when I say, for instance,
Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Rome,

00:06:05

this would be not homgenous. This is on a different level. It's not the same type of countries.
It's a city in between.

00:06:15

The next one is non-overlapping. This is non-overlapping, this example here, because this guy
is offering

00:06:24

apples and Golden Delicious. And they overlap. And this is a quite difficult problem to achieve
in lists of contents and

00:06:35

all kinds of tables, to try to not overlap the content. And the last one, Juergen mentioned it
already, is not exhaustive.

00:06:47

It is not really 100%. You look at the last crate here. There is something missing and so it's not
exhaustive.

00:06:57

These are the three basic rules of good or, here, bad structures. Okay, to wrap it up briefly.

00:07:07

We have in the conceptual part of the SUCCESS rules, we have the SAY part, which means
we have to convey our message.

00:07:15

And the last one is STRUCTURE. Organize the content properly. This is SAY and
STRUCTURE, and tomorrow we will go on with the perceptual rules

00:07:31

in the next unit of our course.

Week 2 Unit 3
00:00:09

Hello and welcome to the third unit of week 2. In the last unit, Rolf has introduced the
conceptual rules

00:00:22

of the SUCCESS formula. He has been talking about SAY and STRUCTURE, about conveying
a message and giving that message a good structure or a good story line.

00:00:33

Today we will continue with the first perceptual rule set, the first perceptual step in our
SUCCESS formula.

00:00:44

Now that we know what message we want to convey, we can think about how to visualize it.
So it's about choosing the proper visualization.

00:00:56

I would like to explain that by looking at an example from a big German insurance company.

00:01:05

This insurance company has in an annual report a pie chart showing the shares of the
employees by regions.

00:01:16

So for instance, you see that in Germany we have 38% of all employees. The question is, what
is the message of such a chart?

00:01:29

The problem with pie charts is that they only can convey mundane messages. So pie charts
are almost never a good choice.

00:01:38

For instance, if you would like to increase the message with more information, with, let's say,
comparisons, with explanations,

00:01:51

or even suggestions, you couldn't do that in a pie chart. Just think about you would like to
compare those shares you see in this pie chart

00:02:02

with the shares from previous year. How would you do that? It's not possible to add a
comparison to a pie chart.

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That's why we think pie charts are not the right charts to show not-mundane messages.

00:02:19

I just want to show you how we could use a better visualization in order to convey a better or
more interesting message.

00:02:32

Let's just transform this pie chart first into a column chart. We have a stacked column chart
showing the number of employees working in Germany,

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in other Europe, and so on. We have the total number of employees. Well, we add a title. You
already know that. So we have our standard title concept

00:02:55

and we add a message telling us well, the number of employees in Germany is...whatever. So
it's just transformed. Nothing won yet.

00:03:08

But now we can add the level of information and create more interesting messages. For
instance, we could add the previous year.

00:03:21

So it's the 38% in 2006, but the question is what number of employees did we have before?

00:03:30

And we see well, there have been 40% working in Germany in the previous year. This is
ficticious data, but just to give you an impression.

00:03:40

And now that we see that the share in Germany has decreased, the question arises whether
this is probably a strategy of this company

00:03:48

and we could increase information density by looking to more previous years. And oh, okay,
there has been a decrease from more than 50% to those 38%.

00:04:02

And now we are interested about the future. Is it a strategy? WIll they decrease the share of
employees in future even more?

00:04:11

And yes, they want to reduce it to almost 30%. And we can look at competitors. How are they
working?

00:04:22

Do they have a significant share of employees in German-speaking countries or in Germany?

And there are two competitors maybe.

00:04:30

An international one with only a small share of employees in Germany and another one with a
high share of employees.

00:04:37

So we can talk business. And that's exactly what we think is the right thing.

00:04:44

We should have visualizations give you a complete impression of what's going on and the
good choice of visualization are those that help to transfer not-mundane messages.

00:04:56

Interesting messages. Just to give you an overview what we could do. This was before and
this was after.

00:05:08

If we take a systematic approach to that, we could look at a kind of chart selection matrix. We
think that if we use the same chart type for time series all the time

00:05:26

and a different chart type for structures. For instance, we use column charts and line charts
always for time series

00:05:36

and bar charts for structures, that would help. And we use column charts for those time series
that only have a few data points

00:05:47

and if we have a lot of data points, let's say daily information over a year, then we use lines.

00:05:54

And now we can have different types of those column charts, bar charts, line charts. We can
stack them. We can normalize them. We can index them.

00:06:09

Maybe it's too much to talk about every single chart type here but you should know that
depending on the purpose,

00:06:17

depending on the message you want to convey, you can choose the right chart type.

00:06:23

You can choose waterfalls. You can compare information by having overlapping columns and
bars.

00:06:30

You can have variances. Bar charts, line charts, or column charts showing variances. Absolute
variances, percentage variances.

00:06:40

And you have waterfall charts showing variances as well. So a plethora of different chart types,
all for different purposes.

00:06:50

So what we suggest is try to use line charts, to use column charts, to use bar charts, and
probably to use portfolio charts that I haven't shown here.

00:07:04

And probably this would cover 95% or even more of your needs. Now that we have selected
the right visualization,

00:07:18

the question is how do we design this chart? And our suggestion is to design it as simple as
possible.

00:07:29

Just to leave everything away that does not help to convey the message. No decoration,
nothing. Avoid all visual clutter.

00:07:40

I would like to show this SIMPLIFY step of our SUCCESS formula by using a really cluttered
chart. Look at this one.

00:07:51

Too much color, too much frames, too much whatever and I would like to reduce all the
superfluous things in, let's say, a 25-step procedure.

00:08:02

We start by asking the question whether this colored background has any sense. Does it help
to convey any message? Is there any meaning of that?

00:08:13

No. It's not. So if there is no meaning, we leave it away. And here we have another
background. The yellow one. Is there a need for it?

00:08:25

No, it's not, so leave it away. Now the logo. Does the logo help to convey a message?

00:08:34

Maybe in an external situation yes. If you have a presentation at a customer site, maybe yes.
But internally, you know what company you are working for

00:08:45

so use your space for information and not for the decoration of a logo. So maybe we don't
need that. And now again we have such a 3D kind of frame

00:08:59

We don't need that. And there is another frame. We don't need this one. We have this kind of
3D columns. This has been popular some years ago.

00:09:10

And it's really a problem because it's not only

maybe disturbing in the sense of clutter but it's visually a problem because you see the
columns
and you think they are higher than they actually are because you have this 3D effect. So we
really recommend not to use those 3D visualizations.

00:09:24

00:09:35

Well. Talking about fonts. Do you see the difference between those two fonts? The difference
is that we simplified the font type.

00:09:47

We don't use fonts with serifs, but if you visualize on a screen you typically use sans-serif fonts
like Arial or something like that.

00:09:56

And we don't use bold face, because bold face is for highlighting. If you want to highlight
something, yes of course you can use bold face

00:10:07

but if everything is bold face right from the beginning, you cannot highlight it anymore. So don't
use highlighted fonts.

00:10:15

Now we look at superfluous words. That it is a graphical display, I see that it is a graphical
display. I don't need that.

00:10:23

I see that it shows development, so I don't need it. And the rest is put into a standard title on
the left upper corner. You already know that.

00:10:33

Now let's talk about this legend. We don't need that legend because it's already mentioned,

00:10:40

the countries are already mentioned at the little charts. So we don't need that. And if we look at
the little charts, there's always mentioned "Net Sales".

00:10:50

We don't need that. Net sales is already mentioned in the title in the upper left corner. We don't
need it.

00:10:56

And it's always mentioned "Division Food." It's not mentioned in the title yet, so we put it into
the title

00:11:03

and we can get rid of it in the individual charts. Same with euros. Euros are mentioned in the
title so we don't need it in all individual charts

00:11:15

and we don't need that scale and the numbers because we have the numbers already put on
top of the columns.

00:11:23

Now there's one thing we can talk about. Number of digits. Visually, it doesn't help if you have
four digits of a number.

00:11:33

In charts we suggest to have three digits. Maybe in tables four. But here we can reduce one
digit.

00:11:40

Then we have another frame. We get rid of that frame. And the best is yet to come. Is there a
need for those four colors?

00:11:51

It's not. Because it's already labeled Belgium, France, and Sweden and the U.S. so we can get
rid of the color.

00:12:02

And if you compare this one... maybe we can even do a little more semantic to show that it is
plan, okay.

00:12:10

And maybe we can reduce one more digit. But if you compare that to the original one, it's really
a big, big difference.

00:12:21

Let me switch a little back and forth to see the difference. Okay, that's simplifying. And if you
simplfy it, I wanted to show you really expressively

00:12:35

what simplify means. If you have a really colored picture... and the interesting thing here is the
traffic light.

00:12:49

If you look at the traffic light, you almost do not detect the traffic light. If you reduce the color as
we do here, you immediately see the traffic light.

00:12:59

If we transfer that to our charts, this is a black and white chart as you have seen it in the
templates the last week.

00:13:09

And now we can add a highlight. Maybe we want to see this specific column. And we color it
blue. It's like the traffic light we've seen before. You see it immediately.

00:13:21

If we had a colored chart, you would not have even detected it. Okay, so we have selected the
right visualization. EXPRESS.

00:13:34

And we have simplified our layout so we have avoided all clutter, all superfluous things. Those
have been the two first steps of our perceptual design.

00:13:46

Tomorrow we will complete the perceptual design by using the CONDENSE and the CHECK
rules of the SUCCESS formula

00:13:59

of the International Business Communication Standards. Hope to see you again.

Week 2 Unit 4
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to unit 4 of the second week of our course. It's about perceptual design
again, about perceptual rule sets.

00:00:23

Now about CONDENSE and CHECK. And I would like to start with CONDENSE and show
examples

00:00:33

of how to increase information density in other disciplines. This one is, again, an electric circuit
with little information density.

00:00:45

And here we have a much more condensed example which could be even bigger and more
complex in reality.

00:00:55

And I would like to come back to music. This one bar we have seen before has little
information density.

00:01:04

But when we see the complete concerto, which is about 30 times as much information on
these two pages,

00:01:11

it's the real world of sheet music. And I also would like to come back to this one example we
discussed in the SIMPLIFY part.

00:01:22

This was this rather ugly example of a graphical display which could be made more simple by
using these SUCCESS rules.

00:01:35

It looks like this. And we could now increase information density. That means we make it
smaller and maybe show 4x3 little charts on one page, like here.

00:01:50

And we could even put more information on this. Now we have around maybe 20 different
charts and we could see

00:01:59

the big picture. We get an overview. And we could see the important and less important
countries contributing to net sales.

00:02:10

Now I would like to take an example from an annual report. This time it's an SAP report from
2010

00:02:19

where we have several charts that talk about sales and profit. There are three here on these
two pages

00:02:30

and there are two pie charts, two circles, more on these pages. Altogether, we have something
like 10 or 11 different pieces

00:02:41

or visualizations representing sales and profit. But it's very complex, it's very difficult, it's not
easy to really get an overview

00:02:52

what is SAP doing in this business. So, well, I can repeat some issues we already had and
then come to the CONDENSE part.

00:03:02

For instance, here, no rings, no pies, no circles. We talked about this. There are better means
of transferring information. It's only a one-dimensional thing.

00:03:11

We talked about the direction of time. It is difficult for us to understand it if the time goes in a
table in an opposite way than in this chart.

00:03:22

And of course, scaling is an issue. We will come back to this in the next unit, which means we
have the need for consistent scaling. So here

00:03:33

the 2010 values of Total Revenue do not look the same as the Research and Development,
which is 1.7 billion vs. 12 billion.

00:03:44

So what can we do? We can stack the revenues, these 12.5 billion in those days, in a very
simple column chart. We can subtract the expenses.

00:03:58

And then show the effect on profit, properly scaled, very simple, easily labeled. And then, of
course, increase information density because we have the figures of five years.

00:04:11

We can increase information density for revenues. The same for expenses. So we see here
the influence of the Support Revenue, which goes up from 3.5

00:04:25

to 6.1 billion. And now we increase the information density here. with expenses and we see
where the expenses have the biggest growth rate

00:04:38

which is Sales and Marketing from 1.9 to 2.6 billion and profit is more or less stable.

10

00:04:47

The profit after tax here amounting to 1.8 billion. Okay. Then well, we have room left here on
the left- hand side so

00:04:57

we can put the other two revenue cuts on this page. This is revenue by region. Instead of
using this pie chart I put the revenues by region also on this page.

00:05:07

Plus the revenues by industry, which gives us the full picture replacing those 11 parts we had
before.

00:05:18

We have a clear title. We might add the operating margin here. The operating margin is shown
in this on the right-hand side here

00:05:31

in a line chart. And we add, of course, a title in order to transfer our message. SAP increased
revenues by 33%.

00:05:43

And you know what is missing. We need a highlighting arrow to show it. It's 33% growth, but at
the same time the operating margin

00:05:55

went down from 26% to 28% in the same time span. So when we compare this one slide, this
one picture,

00:06:08

with these 11 little ones we had before, I can imagine it is easier to understand the business of
SAP than we have seen it before.

00:06:18

Three little examples explaining the need for condensing information. Now I would like to talk
about CHECK.

00:06:26

CHECK. Ensure visual integrity. I here would like to talk about proper scaling only, That's the
most important part. We need a proper scaling concept

00:06:37

and here again a typical example of a PowerPoint slide. I don't know why they do this, but
when you look here you see very quickly

00:06:49

that it has a truncated axis. It starts not at zero. It starts at 2. And so when we do it properly,
we don't see this development.

00:07:00

But when we start at zero, it shows a different development and this would be properly
designed

00:07:09

and this is not correct because it does not really visualize it correctly. That's one typical
example. Truncating axis.

00:07:17

The other one is...I come back to this dashboard we had before... it's not using the same scale
for different charts.

00:07:28

Here I look only at these three charts at the bottom. We have these Top 4 Markets and Top 4
Products and Top 4 Sales Channels. We had it before.

00:07:39

But it's not properly scaled. Because if we scale it properly we don't need the labels at the axis.

00:07:48

We don't need them. But we'd rather scale it properly label it properly, and then it's easy to
understand.

00:07:56

Another example from this annual report we have seen before. Here you see these three
charts

00:08:05

but we get the wrong impression because they are not scaled properly. The 3 billion of
software revenue looks exactly the same as the 12 billion of total revenue.

00:08:19

So if we scale it properly, then we get the proper and the correct impression. I think it's a
necessity. It must be.

00:08:27

But there are some companies and some large organizations already using our IBCS
standards even in their annual report. And one of them is Swiss Post.

00:08:42

The annual report of the Swiss Post for more than, I think, now 6 years or so are using the
rules and they're even using a scaling concept

00:08:54

which is very unique. It might have been the first one in the world which says all charts are
shown to scale to present a true and fair view.

00:09:07

20 millimeters is equivalent to 1 billion Swiss francs which is very, very normal for architects,
for engineers

11

00:09:17

or for geographic maps that people say, well, 1 mile equals 2 millimeters or 1 kilometer is 2
centimeters. This is quite normal.

00:09:28

But it's not normal at all in annual reports where the scaling somehow is not standard all over
the report.

00:09:39

So what does it mean now? When we look at charts, you see here on the left-hand side

00:09:46

these 800 million of normalized operating profit were even shown in this way on the right-hand
side because the operating income was much bigger

00:10:00

and so they had to use this visualizaton to do it properly. This is quite interesting. When you
look in the report, every single chart

00:10:11

is visualized in the same way if we talk bout billions. Of course, the post office sells stamps
and the stamp prices of course have a different scale.

00:10:21

But they are not looking the same. They have a different visual design. Okay. To wrap it up,
we have touched now four aspects in the perceptual design.

00:10:35

We talked about EXPRESS and SIMPLIFY in the last unit and today about the other two,
which means CONDENSE and CHECK.

00:10:48

And the last unit which is now missing is coming again back to the UNIFY. The semantic part
of our concept.

12

Week 2 Unit 5
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to the fifth and final unit of week 2. Now that you've been acquainted with
the conceptual

00:00:21

and the perceptual steps of our SUCCESS formula, I would like to come back to the semantic
notation we've been talking about in the week before.

00:00:32

This semantic notation forms the UNIFY part of our SUCCESS formula. Now I would like to
come back and show you that the single rules

00:00:45

of this UNIFY part of the SUCCESS formula support other rules in other steps.

00:00:54

I want to do that by going through single rules, as you see those single rules on our poster.

00:01:04

This poster has the seven steps of the SUCCESS formula in the columns and the second
column is the UNIFY column.

00:01:13

So we have a small picture for every rule of this semantic design part of our SUCCESS
formula in the second column.

00:01:23

And I want to show you some of those pictures and explain how they support other rules in
other steps.

00:01:32

Let's start with this first one, which is about the terms and abbreviations. You probably
remember that we have been talking in the semantic notation part of this course

00:01:49

that we suggest a unified usage of terms and abbreviations. And this is not only a semantic
rule, but it helps

00:02:02

to understand the reports and the presentations. So it supports the conveyance of messages.
It supports the SAY step of our SUCCESS formula.

00:02:13

Same is with numbers, units, and dates. If you use the same notation for numbers, units, and
dates,

00:02:22

you will better understand a report. This supports SAY. The same is if you put the message in
the same way on every report,

00:02:32

at the same position, in the same font. The overall layout is the same. You immediately see
well, this is obviously the message.

00:02:40

And this helps understanding. This supports Or if you look at titles.

00:02:47

You remember titles are really important to identify the content of a chart or a table. If we have
unified usage of titles, this supports the conveyance of messages.

00:03:03

Or if we look at tables. If we unify the visualization of tables by using the same, let's say,
design style guide for tables

00:03:16

then it would help to understand the structure of a table. You see on the left-hand side a bad
design of a table.

00:03:24

On the right-hand side, a good structured design. If that is our standard, it would help to
understand the structure of the table. It supports STRUCTURE.

00:03:35

Same is if we have a certain visualization for the chapters of a 10 or 15-page report. Then we
would understand the structure of that report.

00:03:48

Let's come to the next one. If we really have a consistent use of these
vertical and horizontal charts,

00:03:59

you remember that we suggested to only use horizontal charts for time series and vertical
charts, typical bar charts, for the comparison of structures.

00:04:10

If we do that, this is of course the semantic rule, But it supports the choice of the right
visualization.

00:04:20

So it supports EXPRESS. The same is if we have a unification of the way we visualize

variances.

00:04:30

Red and green and so on. This will help to find the right way for a proper visualization.

00:04:42

Let's come to SIMPLIFY. If we have a concept for the usage of colors,

00:04:49

so if in our notation manual--you remember we have been talking about a notation manual-- if
in that notation manual we have a consistent, defined usage of colors

13

00:05:01

then you won't have any colored charts anymore. Unless the color supports meaning.

00:05:11

If always my company is colored in blue and the others are colored in grey, that might be
perfect. But it should have a meaning. Color should convey meaning

00:05:22

and this has to be defined in the notation manual. Or if you look at indicators.

00:05:30

If you have a plethora of indicators and all the designers of reports use their own indicators to
highlight whatever is for highlighting,

00:05:39

then you won't understand it. Define it in the notation manual and it will be much simpler. The
layout is simplified.

00:05:50

The other thing is if in our notation manual we decide to have integrated labels, to have
integrated legends, so not separated as in the chart on the left-hand side.

00:06:03

Then it's much easier to read. And if we do that, it supports the simplification of our chart. A
much bigger thing is the support of CONDENSE.

00:06:18

Actually, it's the situation that condensing is not possible without semantic design. Look at this
electric chart, map, whatever, circuits.

00:06:33

It's really highly condensed information. and you would not understand that if you would not
have a kind of

00:06:42

pattern recognition for what is going on. And you immediately know okay, this is a capacitor.
It's the same with sheet music.

00:06:50

A conductor would not be able to understand the score with thousands of black dots if there
would not be a pattern recognition.

00:07:00

And pattern recognition is only possible with semantic notation. So CONDENSE and UNIFY
are really close together.

00:07:10

Well. And unification in general supports CONDENSE as well in the usage of multiple charts.

00:07:18

If we have decided that we have specific chart types, we can add them together on one page,
would understand it, and by this can condense information.

00:07:33

Another aspect is the support of CHECK. We have been talking about correct scaling.

00:07:40

Well, sometimes it's probably not possible to use the same scale. But if it's not possible, then
we should show that it is a different scale.

00:07:51

And for this we use scaling indicators. And if they are standardized, so we have a semantic
design for scaling indicators,

00:07:59

you will understand the different scales. So it supports CHECK. Same is with outlier indicators.

00:08:11

So the unification of those outlier indicators supports the CHECK issue. Well. Now that we've
been through all those single rules

00:08:25

of the UNIFY step of our SUCCESS formula, you've seen that those single rules,

00:08:33

the semantic design supports all the other steps of our SUCCESS formula. That's the reason
why we think that this semantic design,

00:08:43

what we've been talking about the last week, is the missing link to an international business
communication standard,

00:08:51

a visual language that helps us to convey our messages like the standards in other disciplines
help to communicate in other disciplines.

00:09:03

This is actually the main idea of Hichert and Faisst and the main aspect of the International
Business Communication Standards.

00:09:12

Adding semantic design to the other steps. As I've already mentioned in the beginning, those
International Business Communication Standards

00:09:23

are not defined and not further developed by Hichert and Faisst, but it's an open source
project.

00:09:33

So again, I would like to invite you to work with us on that open source project. Read it for free
on ibcs-a.org.

14

00:09:42

And do not only read it. Please comment on it. We have a version 1.0 of those International
Business Communication Standards

00:09:49

and the community will develop this further. So we will probably have a version 2.0 next year
and probably your comments will be respected.

00:10:01

All comments will be shown on the Web site and they are listed on the first page so you see
the latest comments on our project Web site.

00:10:11

If you need additional material, you find some PDFs that might be helpful on our Web site. You
find the notation manuals or templates for those notation manuals

00:10:23

that we've been talking about. By the way, you will find the templates as well in PDF format, in
Excel format. Sometimes even in Excel format.

00:10:34

And you will find the poster we've been talking about a second ago. So if you need additional
material, just look at the Web site.

00:10:45

Well. We've come to the end of our course on semantic notation. Don't forget to take your
weekly assignments.

00:10:54

On behalf of Hichert and Faisst, I wish you a lot of success when implementing the SUCCESS
formula of the International Business Communication Standards.

00:11:07

Thank you and goodbye.

15

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