Texas Instruments
Memorandum

To:         Louise Willis, Publications Department
From:     Bo Bayles
Date:         1 June, 2005
Subject:     Improving TI Data Sheet Template

As requested, I studied a TI data sheet to see what changes can be made to the data sheet template to make them more attractive and easier to read. The sheet I studied was for the SMJ320C6201b CPU.

Description of the Data Sheet Template

These are major characteristics of the data sheet I studied:

• Typeface: All of the text is a sans-serif typeface.
• Type Size: The title uses 14 pt. type, the heading is 11 pt. type, and the body is 10 pt. type.
• Margins: Both the left and right margins are very thin. The body text is full-justified.
• Headings: There is one heading for the page that uses the same font as the rest of the document, but is one point larger type. It is set to the left of the body text.
• Headers and Footers: The header lists the title of the data sheet in 14 pt. type, and in smaller type is the revision date. The footer has the Texas Instruments logo and contact information and the current page number. The headers and footers are set off from the body by horizontal rules.
• Layout: The body text is single spaced, and there is double spacing between paragraphs.

Suggestions for Improvement

A number of changes can be made to make the data sheet I studied more readable. As-is, it is very uninviting – the long line length, thin margins, and minimal paragraph separation makes the document seem hard to read at first glance.

• Body Text: The body text can be made more readable by changing to a serif type face. Serifs make letters more distinct and readable on paper. The headings can stay sans-serif since they are not very long, and it helps differentiate them from the body text. The current font size, 10 pt., is appropriate for body text, however, so that can stay the same.
• White space: Adding white space by increasing the margins' width will go a long way toward making the data sheets less intimidating. Wider margins will decrease the number of characters per line. The current line length is hard to read – the first line is 106 characters long, but optimal readability is said to be under 60 characters. Paper space may be a concern, but for the data sheet I read, there was plenty of room at the bottom of the page to increase margins and decrease line length without spilling onto another page. If paper space is a concern, adding columns of text can increase what fits on a page and break up long lines.
• Justification: Changing from full-justification to left-justification could make the data sheets easier to read. Using left-justification ensures equal spacing between words and sentences, but full-justification allows for uneven spacing that can slow down readers. Full-justification is also more prone to “rivers,” places where spaces between words line up, distracting the reader. The data sheet I studied had distracting rivers of white space.
• Chunking: “Chunking” the information in the data sheets would dramatically increase readability. None of the paragraphs in the data sheet I studied had headings, and they did not have their first lines indented. Adding headings to paragraphs and increasing the space between them breaks the information being presented into easier-to-read chunks that are less intimidating to readers. Indenting the first line of a paragraph also helps set it off from the rest of the text.
• Headings: Headings help organize the information a document presents. The data sheet I studied only had one heading at the very top of the page, “CPU Description.” This is a fairly general heading for a data sheet on a CPU – the data sheet should have more specific headings for its different sections. I would recommend adding headings for each section of data presented in the data sheet. Combined with separating paragraphs as above, this will help break up the information and make it more accessible. For example, the data sheet I studied could have the following headings: “Very Long Instruction Word Features,” “Functional Units,” “Load/ Store Architecture,” and “Processing Flow.”
  
  Headings should be distinct from the rest of a document's text. I recommend, for our data sheets, using a different type face for headings, e.g. sans-serif, than for body text. This helps distinguish headings and the sections they indicate, and establish a pattern through their repetition, making documents more readable. The heading in the data sheet I studied was the same font as the rest of the text, and only 1 point larger. It was set to the left of the text, which helped distinguish it, but to stand out more, headings should be significantly (i.e. 20%) larger and a different font style.
• Header and Footer: The current data sheet header is not too bad. It presents the title of the data sheet and the current revision. The text is 14 pt. type, appropriate for titles and headers, and the revision information is smaller and a different font and case, which differentiates it from the rest of the text. Both the header and footer are separated from the body by horizontal rules, which is good. The footer currently contains the TI logo and contact information and the current page number. While the page number is a useful piece of information to have, the TI logo and contact information is unnecessary and distracting.

Conclusions

A number of changes can be made to the current TI data sheet template to make it easier and more inviting to read. Changes to its text styles and layout and the addition of headings to break up content will go a long way to improve data sheets made from the template.

HowStuffWorks.com
Memorandum

To:         Marshall Brain
From:     Bo Bayles
Date:         1 June, 2005
Subject:     Graphics Usage at HowStuffWorks.com

As requested, I studied one of the articles at HowStuffWorks.com to analyze the effectiveness of the site's graphics. I studied the article “How Gas Prices Work” at http://travel.howstuffworks.com/gas-price.htm – below is my analysis.

Discussion By Section

Effective graphics serve a clear purpose. They should illustrate a point to the reader or support a point made in an article's text. For example, the first graphic in the article I studied shows someone filling their vehicle at a gas station, supporting the sentence in the text “Our personal vehicles alone guzzle 65 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel each year.”

“Guzzling Gas In America”

The article's second image, however, does not illustrate any point made in the article, and none of the text around it introduces it. The text before it is about a change in Americans' driving habits. The text after it is about the average daily consumption of gasoline in the U.S. The picture, however, has the caption “A gas station in Denver, CO.” The article would be strengthened by replacing this graphic with one that makes sense. Since the sentence before the image is “Americans drive more than 2.5 trillion miles per year in automobiles, light trucks and SUVs... Today, we drive almost twice as much as we did in 1980 (1.5 trillion miles), when gas prices were at their highest,” a more appropriate graphic would be a chart showing the increase in the number of miles driven by Americans since 1980.

The other graphic in this section, a table of historical gas prices, is very useful. It presents historical data on gas prices, adjusted for inflation, in an easy-to-read format.  Its integration with the article is logical; it is to the right of the text. Its effectiveness could be improved by a specific reference to it in the text, however.

“Where Your Money Goes”

The image used in this section is very effective in conveying information from the text to the reader. It shows, graphically, what factors go into gasoline pricing. Although a more traditional pie chart could do the same job, making the graph into a gas pump makes the data more appealing to a general reader.

The graphic would better serve its purpose - showing the information presented in the list it supports -  with better placement. Right now, it is placed above the list of gas price factors, so the reader sees it before the explanation of each factor. A more logical placement would be alongside the list factors, so the reader can read each explanation and see each number in the text, then look to the right to see what portion of the total each factor contributes.

“Regional Differences”

This section has one very informative graphic, and could use another one. The first graphic, “Global Gas Prices,” shows information that might be hard to process in text in a table. This table, however, is not introduced in the text. There should be a reference to the table, or at least a reference to global gasoline prices in the text. However, all of the text in the section is about domestic gasoline prices, not global prices.

The second part of this section could use an illustration to support it. It talks about areas in the United States that average higher gas prices. A helpful illustration might be a color-coded map that show how prices vary by region.

“Control of the Oil Market”

The first graphic in this section is neither referenced in the article text nor relevant to the discussion around it. The sentence before the image is about the countries that produce oil, the sentence after it is about what portion of the oil market they control, but the graphic is a photograph of an oil tanker. If the article had referenced transporting oil from producer companies, this might make sense, but without support from the text, this image loses its usefulness. The rest of this section is clear enough without additional graphics; none of the text includes numerical data that should be in a table or illustrated.

“Domestic Supplies”

This section could be improved by adding a graphic to support the first sentence. It says “it may be surprising to know that the United States is the world's second largest producer of oil,” which is information that could be combined with data from the previous section to make a graphic such as a bar graph or pie chart that shows the top world producers of oil.

“Strategic Petroleum Reserve” and “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge”

The one graphic in the first section is properly placed with the article text, but is not referenced by the text. The photograph of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve provides a good visual representation of the area being described in the section, but a short note on its presence would increase its effectiveness. The rest of these sections are clear enough without additional graphics, since none of the article text needs to depict data graphically or illustrate a process.

Summary of Findings

Most of the graphics in the “How Gas Prices Work” article are useful in that they help communicate and clarify the article's information to its reader.  This article's graphics usage can be improved by better introducing some graphics in the text, placing some graphics in more logical locations, and adding illustrations to help clarify some text. The most important recommendation I have is to make more specific references to an article's graphics in the text; few of the graphics in the article I read noted supporting graphics.