How to Data Presentation Changes According to Audience

In one of the last organizations where I worked, in the canteen area, they used to display the amount of food wasted the previous day. The objective was to make people aware of the scale and bring change in their behavior towards less food wastage.

The way they used to show it: “We wasted 47 kgs of food yesterday” [47 is just an example]

For the decision-makers, this number made sense because their objective was to calculate the cost of it and reduce food wastage (they also had category-wise data).

As a consumer, I was able to read and understand the data but could not comprehend it. What did 47 kgs of food waste mean? But what if they showed the data as: “Overall we wasted 47 kgs of food yesterday which is on an average 2 idlis wasted per person”? Does this make sense to you more now? To me it did. Because now I was able to comprehend it.

Whether 47 kg of 2 idlis per person is used — it is the same data. However, the image it creates in the minds of the users is different since the objective of the audience is different. The decision makers need to use it to reduce the cost while for consumers, it was sensitisation.

This exercise made me understand how the same data needs to be presented differently according to the audience and the objective of using that data.

Btw, the fact that we were wasting two idlis was told by the food manager herself when I reached out to her to understand the data.

A few weeks later, they changed their statement to “We wasted 47 kg of food yesterday and it could have fed 64 people.” Not sure why they changed it but it was good seeing the more relevant data on the screen!

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