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This article was co-published with Source.

The scene is total chaos: a woman and all her purse's contents in middair as she trips over a child's toy, a man hastily trying to gather his spilled laundry, a screaming child weaving through the crowd. Somewhere, in the midst of it all, is the person you've been looking for: wearing a red and white striped shirt, black rimmed glasses and a lopsided cap. There he is! There's Waldo.

Many of us have fond memories of Waldo. But while he looms large in our imagination, our childhood searches for Waldo typically stayed pretty small – Waldo is a tiny person in the middle of lots of other tiny things.

And that's what this post is about: wee things. Specifically, the wee things that we see as part of graphics, maps, visualizations (wee things in space) as well as the wee things we experience as part of interactions, navigation, and usability (wee things in time). This means everything from sequences of small graphics that help us make comparisons, to tiny locator maps that help orient us within a larger graphic, to navigation icons that give hints about how we should make our way around a page.

Waldo, and the eternal search for him, can actually tell us quite a lot about design. In many ways, Waldo is a great example of what NOT to do when using wee things in your own work. So with Waldo as our anti-hero, let's take a look at how people read and interpret small visual forms, why tiny details can be hugely useful, and what principles we can apply to make all these little images and moments work for us as designers.

Wee Things In Space

Probably the most immediate definition of wee things are things that are physically small: little things on a page. We see these all the time in news graphics, and we're probably familiar with some of their forms: small multiples, sparklines, icons, etc. I'll go into more details about all of these.

These visual forms work because they serve as extensions of our mind – they are cognitive tools that complement our own mental abilities. They do this by recording information for us to make use of later, lending a hand to our (pretty terrible) working memories, helping us search and discover and recognize. We'll take a look at one task in particular they are great at: letting us make comparisons.

Make Comparisons

Tiny sequences of graphics, also known as small multiples, are great ways to help our brains compare. They are so successful because we don’t have to rely on working memory – every bit of information is in front of us at the same time. This means that we can easily see changes, patterns or differences.

Here are a bunch of examples of small multiples in the wild – maps and planets, first lady hair styles and telegraph signals, food trucks, fashion color trends and dressing appropriately for different climates, the distribution of deaths in the 1870’s and last but not least, Bill Murray’s hats.

Drought’s Footprint, NY Times

Kepler’s Tally of Planets, NY Times

Strands of American History, NY Times (L) and The Conspicuous Telegraph, Scientific American (R)

Trucks on a Roll, NY Magazine

Front Row to Fashion Week, NY Times (L) and Weather people (R)

Statistical Atlas of the Ninth Census (L) and Bill Murray Loves Hats, Derek Eads (R)

The reason we can make comparisons so easily is because these small multiples take advantage of the built-in capabilities of our visual system. Specifically, something called preattentive processing.

Preattentive Processing

Table of Preattentive Features, Design for Information, Isabel Meirelles

Technically, preattentive processing refers to "cognitive operations that can be performed prior to focusing attention on any particular region of an image.” But basically, it means the stuff you notice right away. Our brains aren't like scanners, they throw away most of what the eyes see. But they are good at perceiving simple visual features like color or shape or size, and in fact they do it amazingly fast without any conscious effort. That means we can tell immediately when a part of an image is different from the rest, without really having to focus on it. Our minds are really good at spotting one or two differences when everything else is the same.

Like in this example, you can easily spot Waldo.

It's easy to spot Waldo surrounded by his arch nemesis, Odlaw.

Or in this example, right? This is not hard.

Zen Version of Where's Waldo, Dan Piraro

But obviously, this is not where Waldo typically hangs out! Where he goes, I can't find him at a glance, and I need to spend a lot of time and actual effort. Our experiences with Waldo are usually something more like this:

A few years ago a group of MIT researchers actually studied what happened when people saw a scene like this. They used eye tracking devices to look at how people go about finding Waldo. This is what happens on a typical search:

Statistical patterns of visual search for hidden objects, Scientific Reports

Those jagged lines are the path of the eye as it hunts for Waldo (ending in success at the red dot). As you can probably tell, the process is far from straightforward.

So, Waldo basically thwarts our preattentive processing. Instead, he forces us to use our attentive processing: the conscious, slow, sequential process that lets us focus on one thing at a time. This "spotlight" of attention might be good at letting us concentrate, but it makes us pretty bad at spotting Waldo. We have such a hard time seeing him (despite the fact that he's right there in plain sight) because he doesn’t stand out in any clear way, color or size or orientation.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

Draw a Sasquatch, Ed Emberly

We’ve also got process graphics like this one, of the many steps to creating a Japanese woodblock print, or even how to make an origami elephant.

Process of Printing Wood Engravings (L) and Origami Elephant Tutorial (R)

Orientation

Wee things can also be used to orient someone, to give them a bird’s eye view.

One of my favorite features of the text editor Sublime Text is this mini map, which shows you a zoomed out smaller version of the page you're working on. There's also mini locator map in this Washignton Post graphic, which stays fixed on the left side of a regular sized map and scrolls down as you move along 14th Street.

Sublime's mini locator map (L) and Take a stroll down the new 14th Street, The Washington Post (R)

Same idea in this example from WNYC, which lets you see exactly where you are on Fielder Ave as you move horizontally through the photographs of houses damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Fielder Ave, WNYC

Or this little map that moves along an enormously long satellite image of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (special points to the wee red square which changes shape as you resize your browser window).

A Rogue State Along Two Rivers, NY Times

Mini locator maps can give you more context for a story, like in this example from Grantland, where the route of an long dog sled race in Alaska is filled in as you scroll – or this vertical version of the same thing, following a drive from St Petersburg to Moscow.

Out in the Great Alone, Grantland (L) and The Russia Left Behind, NY Times (R)

Convey Meaning

Another benefit of wee things is that they pack a punch. A tiny graphic can say a hell of a lot without taking up too much room.

In some cases, that happens by swapping tiny things in for words. The book The Information is full of little inline pictures, like little arrows that convey intonation in speech, or a sequence of little dots to show an early idea for Morse code. Galileo stuck tiny pictures of Saturninto his writing, using them as just another piece of a sentence.

The Information, James Gleick (L) and Galileo Saturn drawings (R)

Another old example is a version of Euclid’s Elements by a mathematician Oliver Byrne, who illustrated the whole thing with geometric shapes right in line with the text (I present to you: the wee hypotenuse).

The Elements of Euclid, Oliver Byrne

Then, we’ve also the mini graphics that many of you are probably familiar with: sparklines. These are tiny charts that show variation (usually over time). Now you can even put them in your tweets.

The 2010 Lexicon, Bloomberg Businessweek (L) and Sparktweets (R)

Another familiar example: the icon. We use icons and symbols all the time to convey a lot of pretty crucial information like what’s down the road, which door to go in, how to play and pause and rewind. On the web these are especially prevalent. We see social and navigation icons everywhere on the web, and they tell us a lot about how to find your way around a website or where to search or even how to like something. The Noun Project is a big repository full of icons you can use for free, kinda.

The Noun Project

Graphical fonts are also icons, so here's an example of an font called Stateface, which makes it easy to embed a wee state into a graphic or table.

Stateface, ProPublica

But keep in mind, that while some icons carry lots of meaning, they don't all carry the same amount. Icons work because they are recognizable, and if people are not quite sure what they mean, they lose their power. New icons may take time to become commonplace.

But some icons are more equal than others. A study of search icons found that a lone magnifying glass is often not enough to convey "search", especially when it doesn’t look exactly like the magnifying glass we are used to seeing. Instead, it helps to give people a few more clues, like placing the icon on the top right hand side of the page, or placing it within something that looks like a text field.

On a similar note, not everyone knows that the hamburger icon stands for "menu," – it is definitely not as universal as a peace sign. Another analysis found that making the icon look more like a button or including the word "menu" made people more likely to understand. So make sure that if your icon is new or unclear, you add extra information.

And of course, this doesn't mean you can't make up your own icons, as long as you provide context. We may never have seen a man riding a fish, but in this case it (obviously!) represents a fish hatchery employee.

Who Goes to Work? Who Stays Home? NY Times

Differentiate

One more benefit of wee thing is that they can help us differentiate individual elements. We often see graphics with lots of small circles, and these imply lots of small individual items. We can easily guess that they are multiple distinct elements, and we might try to hover, or click. The little dots make it clear that these are distinct.

This article was co-published with Source.

The scene is total chaos: a woman and all her purse's contents in middair as she trips over a child's toy, a man hastily trying to gather his spilled laundry, a screaming child weaving through the crowd. Somewhere, in the midst of it all, is the person you've been looking for: wearing a red and white striped shirt, black rimmed glasses and a lopsided cap. There he is! There's Waldo.

Many of us have fond memories of Waldo. But while he looms large in our imagination, our childhood searches for Waldo typically stayed pretty small – Waldo is a tiny person in the middle of lots of other tiny things.

And that's what this post is about: wee things. Specifically, the wee things that we see as part of graphics, maps, visualizations (wee things in space) as well as the wee things we experience as part of interactions, navigation, and usability (wee things in time). This means everything from sequences of small graphics that help us make comparisons, to tiny locator maps that help orient us within a larger graphic, to navigation icons that give hints about how we should make our way around a page.

Waldo, and the eternal search for him, can actually tell us quite a lot about design. In many ways, Waldo is a great example of what NOT to do when using wee things in your own work. So with Waldo as our anti-hero, let's take a look at how people read and interpret small visual forms, why tiny details can be hugely useful, and what principles we can apply to make all these little images and moments work for us as designers.

Wee Things In Space

Probably the most immediate definition of wee things are things that are physically small: little things on a page. We see these all the time in news graphics, and we're probably familiar with some of their forms: small multiples, sparklines, icons, etc. I'll go into more details about all of these.

These visual forms work because they serve as extensions of our mind – they are cognitive tools that complement our own mental abilities. They do this by recording information for us to make use of later, lending a hand to our (pretty terrible) working memories, helping us search and discover and recognize. We'll take a look at one task in particular they are great at: letting us make comparisons.

Make Comparisons

Tiny sequences of graphics, also known as small multiples, are great ways to help our brains compare. They are so successful because we don’t have to rely on working memory – every bit of information is in front of us at the same time. This means that we can easily see changes, patterns or differences.

Here are a bunch of examples of small multiples in the wild – maps and planets, first lady hair styles and telegraph signals, food trucks, fashion color trends and dressing appropriately for different climates, the distribution of deaths in the 1870’s and last but not least, Bill Murray’s hats.

Drought’s Footprint, NY Times

Kepler’s Tally of Planets, NY Times

Strands of American History, NY Times (L) and The Conspicuous Telegraph, Scientific American (R)

Trucks on a Roll, NY Magazine

Front Row to Fashion Week, NY Times (L) and Weather people (R)

Statistical Atlas of the Ninth Census (L) and Bill Murray Loves Hats, Derek Eads (R)

The reason we can make comparisons so easily is because these small multiples take advantage of the built-in capabilities of our visual system. Specifically, something called preattentive processing.

Preattentive Processing

Table of Preattentive Features, Design for Information, Isabel Meirelles

Technically, preattentive processing refers to "cognitive operations that can be performed prior to focusing attention on any particular region of an image.” But basically, it means the stuff you notice right away. Our brains aren't like scanners, they throw away most of what the eyes see. But they are good at perceiving simple visual features like color or shape or size, and in fact they do it amazingly fast without any conscious effort. That means we can tell immediately when a part of an image is different from the rest, without really having to focus on it. Our minds are really good at spotting one or two differences when everything else is the same.

Like in this example, you can easily spot Waldo.

It's easy to spot Waldo surrounded by his arch nemesis, Odlaw.

Or in this example, right? This is not hard.

Zen Version of Where's Waldo, Dan Piraro

But obviously, this is not where Waldo typically hangs out! Where he goes, I can't find him at a glance, and I need to spend a lot of time and actual effort. Our experiences with Waldo are usually something more like this:

A few years ago a group of MIT researchers actually studied what happened when people saw a scene like this. They used eye tracking devices to look at how people go about finding Waldo. This is what happens on a typical search:

Statistical patterns of visual search for hidden objects, Scientific Reports

Those jagged lines are the path of the eye as it hunts for Waldo (ending in success at the red dot). As you can probably tell, the process is far from straightforward.

So, Waldo basically thwarts our preattentive processing. Instead, he forces us to use our attentive processing: the conscious, slow, sequential process that lets us focus on one thing at a time. This "spotlight" of attention might be good at letting us concentrate, but it makes us pretty bad at spotting Waldo. We have such a hard time seeing him (despite the fact that he's right there in plain sight) because he doesn’t stand out in any clear way, color or size or orientation.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

Draw a Sasquatch, Ed Emberly

We’ve also got process graphics like this one, of the many steps to creating a Japanese woodblock print, or even how to make an origami elephant.

Process of Printing Wood Engravings (L) and Origami Elephant Tutorial (R)

Orientation

Wee things can also be used to orient someone, to give them a bird’s eye view.

One of my favorite features of the text editor Sublime Text is this mini map, which shows you a zoomed out smaller version of the page you're working on. There's also mini locator map in this Washignton Post graphic, which stays fixed on the left side of a regular sized map and scrolls down as you move along 14th Street.

Sublime's mini locator map (L) and Take a stroll down the new 14th Street, The Washington Post (R)

Same idea in this example from WNYC, which lets you see exactly where you are on Fielder Ave as you move horizontally through the photographs of houses damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Fielder Ave, WNYC

Or this little map that moves along an enormously long satellite image of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (special points to the wee red square which changes shape as you resize your browser window).

A Rogue State Along Two Rivers, NY Times

Mini locator maps can give you more context for a story, like in this example from Grantland, where the route of an long dog sled race in Alaska is filled in as you scroll – or this vertical version of the same thing, following a drive from St Petersburg to Moscow.

Out in the Great Alone, Grantland (L) and The Russia Left Behind, NY Times (R)

Convey Meaning

Another benefit of wee things is that they pack a punch. A tiny graphic can say a hell of a lot without taking up too much room.

In some cases, that happens by swapping tiny things in for words. The book The Information is full of little inline pictures, like little arrows that convey intonation in speech, or a sequence of little dots to show an early idea for Morse code. Galileo stuck tiny pictures of Saturninto his writing, using them as just another piece of a sentence.

The Information, James Gleick (L) and Galileo Saturn drawings (R)

Another old example is a version of Euclid’s Elements by a mathematician Oliver Byrne, who illustrated the whole thing with geometric shapes right in line with the text (I present to you: the wee hypotenuse).

The Elements of Euclid, Oliver Byrne

Then, we’ve also the mini graphics that many of you are probably familiar with: sparklines. These are tiny charts that show variation (usually over time). Now you can even put them in your tweets.

The 2010 Lexicon, Bloomberg Businessweek (L) and Sparktweets (R)

Another familiar example: the icon. We use icons and symbols all the time to convey a lot of pretty crucial information like what’s down the road, which door to go in, how to play and pause and rewind. On the web these are especially prevalent. We see social and navigation icons everywhere on the web, and they tell us a lot about how to find your way around a website or where to search or even how to like something. The Noun Project is a big repository full of icons you can use for free, kinda.

The Noun Project

Graphical fonts are also icons, so here's an example of an font called Stateface, which makes it easy to embed a wee state into a graphic or table.

Stateface, ProPublica

But keep in mind, that while some icons carry lots of meaning, they don't all carry the same amount. Icons work because they are recognizable, and if people are not quite sure what they mean, they lose their power. New icons may take time to become commonplace.

But some icons are more equal than others. A study of search icons found that a lone magnifying glass is often not enough to convey "search", especially when it doesn’t look exactly like the magnifying glass we are used to seeing. Instead, it helps to give people a few more clues, like placing the icon on the top right hand side of the page, or placing it within something that looks like a text field.

On a similar note, not everyone knows that the hamburger icon stands for "menu," – it is definitely not as universal as a peace sign. Another analysis found that making the icon look more like a button or including the word "menu" made people more likely to understand. So make sure that if your icon is new or unclear, you add extra information.

And of course, this doesn't mean you can't make up your own icons, as long as you provide context. We may never have seen a man riding a fish, but in this case it (obviously!) represents a fish hatchery employee.

Who Goes to Work? Who Stays Home? NY Times

Differentiate

One more benefit of wee thing is that they can help us differentiate individual elements. We often see graphics with lots of small circles, and these imply lots of small individual items. We can easily guess that they are multiple distinct elements, and we might try to hover, or click. The little dots make it clear that these are distinct.

This article was co-published with Source.

The scene is total chaos: a woman and all her purse's contents in middair as she trips over a child's toy, a man hastily trying to gather his spilled laundry, a screaming child weaving through the crowd. Somewhere, in the midst of it all, is the person you've been looking for: wearing a red and white striped shirt, black rimmed glasses and a lopsided cap. There he is! There's Waldo.

Many of us have fond memories of Waldo. But while he looms large in our imagination, our childhood searches for Waldo typically stayed pretty small – Waldo is a tiny person in the middle of lots of other tiny things.

And that's what this post is about: wee things. Specifically, the wee things that we see as part of graphics, maps, visualizations (wee things in space) as well as the wee things we experience as part of interactions, navigation, and usability (wee things in time). This means everything from sequences of small graphics that help us make comparisons, to tiny locator maps that help orient us within a larger graphic, to navigation icons that give hints about how we should make our way around a page.

Waldo, and the eternal search for him, can actually tell us quite a lot about design. In many ways, Waldo is a great example of what NOT to do when using wee things in your own work. So with Waldo as our anti-hero, let's take a look at how people read and interpret small visual forms, why tiny details can be hugely useful, and what principles we can apply to make all these little images and moments work for us as designers.

Wee Things In Space

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it would be a failure. So if you're in the business of displaying data, avoid the Waldo strategy.

And obviously there are reasons for why Waldo doesn't stand out – he is purposely hard to find because his surroundings were constructed to hide him. But in general, we don’t want our graphics or data visualizations to be this much work to understand. If someone had to search that hard to read the information in a chart or graphic, it