With data visualisation, the sky’s the limit

When it comes to explaining concepts of investing to clients, we tend to focus on the information we want to impart, often leaning on graphs and charts to bring investing ideas to life.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But these are ideas that are intended to pique clients’ interest, inspire their trust and excite them.

And surely there’s no better way to do this than to ensure you’re entertaining as you share information.

I’d love to see more financial planning practices being bold enough to embrace entertainment as a way of engaging with clients.

Take the Size of Space by the designer Neal. By visualising and inviting us to explore different things in space, we find ourselves getting a better understanding of the sheer scale of the universe. We understand how one thing compares to another. Who knew, for example how small Mars is? Or how tiny the Earth is when compared to Kepler-22b or Neptune for that matter.

While it’s not financial planning, you can imagine how easy it would be to apply these principles to investment or financial planning concepts and ideas.

And by doing this, how much more clients would engage with the conversation you’re having and the information you’re sharing.

So next time you’re turning a spreadsheet into a graph ask whether it’s worth investing in something that aims for the stars. How you can turn something really quite boring into something that your client wants to get stuck into.