IT Infirmity: What's Ailing Your IT Department on 2012?

Is your IT department feeling a little under the weather? Send it to the IT Infirmity! The What’s Ailing Your IT Department infographic from ViaWest is their first infographic!

What do CIOs rank as their biggest IT aches and pains? What are the average salaries of employees within IT departments? What is the impact of ITtention Deficit - the inability to focus on your core business?  Find out in this infographic from ViaWest.

I really like this design, but the data visualizations need help.  It’s obviously a promotional piece for ViaWest, but there’s nothing wrong with using an infographic that way.  They have also made a high-resolution PDF available.

The story reads very easily from top-to-bottom with clearly separated sections. The icons for each sections are also amusing and keep the overall tone light-hearted.

The only issues I have with the design are the data visualizations. 

• Don’t put 51% on top of a bunch of people icons, and not highlight 51% of the icons to go along with the numerical value. 
• The two bars showing the data created before and after 2009 are actually two parts of the whole 100%, so this should be shown as a stacked bar.  Why is this shown as two separate bars?
• Both of the office tower icon visuals in ITrauma would be easier to understand if they were a single row of building icons.  The 93% is hard to understand visually since you can’t visually tell that 13% of the last building is shaded.  In fact, it doesn’t look to me like the last building is shaded properly.
• At the bottom, there should be a copyright statement
• The design should also include the URL to find the original, high-resolution image on the ViaWest site so when people see this infographic shared on other sites, they can find the original.

Thanks to Todd for sending in the link!

Comments

[Andy]

There are 5 buildings that collectively represent 100%. So each is 20%. The last building represents 13%, so 13/20ths (65%) of it should be shaded. It still looks like not enough is shaded.