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Editorial
Why healthcare professionals should know a little about infographics
  1. Hilary Scott1,2,
  2. Samantha Fawkner1,
  3. Chris Oliver1,
  4. Andrew Murray1,3
  1. 1 Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  2. 2 Robert Gordons University, Aberdeen, UK
  3. 3 Department of Sport and Exercise, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Andrew Murray, Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, 2.33 St Leonard's Land, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 8AO, UK; docandrewmurray{at}googlemail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096133

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    Infographics is an abbreviated term for an information graphic. Information is presented in a logical manner, similar to storytelling, using data visualisations, text and pictures.1 Statistically, the most successful infographics, in terms of number of ‘shares’ on social media, contain an average of 396 words2 and a combination of data visualisations (bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts) and illustrations. Although 396 words may seem like an inadequate amount of text for researchers to convey their findings comprehensively, when considering this in the infographics context, the saying, ‘a picture tells a thousand words’, comes to mind. Three days after learning new information, we are likely to remember up to 6.5 times more through learning from an infographic than by reading text alone.1 Many industries, such as the business, food, …

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter Follow Christopher Oliver at @CyclingSurgeon and Andrew Murray at @docandrewmurray

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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