Information displays should be annotated, combining words, images, graphics, whatever it takes to describe and explain something. Annotation calls out and explains information and, at the same time, explains to viewers how to read data displays. Good annotation is like a knowledgeable expert/teacher at the viewer's side pointing and saying, "Now see how this works with that, how this might explain that..."
Yehudi Menuhin, a great violinist, marked up a score for Bach's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin. Penciled annotations show real-time performance strategies. To outsiders, insider markups appear chaotic and cryptic, but these personal annotations are for Menuhin's eyes, the only eyes that matter. All can learn from this useful workaday grid strategy: a relevant and intense data layer can become a coherent substrate scaffold upon which to overlay additional information. Maps do this all day long.
Maintenance is a low-status affair: you can confess to being unable to change a tyre in a way that you would never confess to being unable to name a play by Shakespeare.
…We understand the expertise of janitors, plumbers and mechanics, and we suffer mightily in their absence, yet somehow we take them for granted. We take for granted, too, the most basic maintenance of all — preparing food, washing clothes, changing dirty nappies. Nobody would boast at a dinner party or on a first date about doing any of this, yet it is essential.
…This is about more than breaking bridges and breaking bike chains. There is a missed opportunity here to find something rather wonderful in maintenance.