Process diagrams are different from hierarchical diagrams in one important aspect. Process diagrams have arrows. Hierarchical diagrams have just boxes and connecting lines. And we know that boxes are clearly more important than connecting lines. But in process diagrams, it's not that obvious, what's more important, boxes or arrows? And sometimes arrows are more important. But most of the time of course, boxes are more important. And this is a constant problem and a constant annoyance. What we need to do is to dim those errors, they need to just guide the eye, they do not need to steal all the attention away from the text. So this is what you get if you're using smart art. This is more or less what you get, if you are trying to make this customized design or maybe even something like this because you are not constrained anymore with those circles. And I think, by the way, that those bright blue numbers are key in designing complex diagrams. They're key in guiding the audience's attention. I've stolen them from somebody and I encourage you to steal them from me. I think they work really well. Next thing, well, when we answered the question what's more important, boxes or arrows, and the answer was boxes. The answer is slightly misleading because what's more important is no the boxes itself, rather it's the text inside the box ergo. The box should not steal all attention away from the text and those boxes are clearly way too bright. We need to, well, let's just remove them altogether. And so are the arrows, by the way, so let's remove those things altogether let's fix typography. Let's add some unobtrusive but visible illustrations that help to communicate the idea that we're trying to communicate and let's add the arrow back. And what we see as a result is a design that is not bright but actually is much more clearer and much easier to comprehend and other example. Once again this is a real life example and a there is too much blue and [INAUDIBLE] office, and those punctured lines are way too noisy and the question is whether we can do without them. And the answer is yes, we can use just white space to separate those things, and we can remove those punctured lines. And we can probably remove all that blue fills and replace them with just borders. And the result will be something like that. And I think this is a much better idea. The next question is whether we need those blue borders at all and the answer is well in this case probably not. The diagram is really easy, working without borders is probably fine. And I think the end result is much better compared to what we had before. It takes about the same amount of space but it's much easier to understand, it's much easier to read. So fills are fine but borders are better. And the next question is can we do without borders? Next example, well, this a really complicated diagram and it's in Russian too, but just trust me, knowing the language doesn't really help. So as a first step, I will remove almost everything including the text, and what we see here are lots and lots of colored boxes, and the first thing to do would be to make them slightly more even. I don't know why this is such a problem. The next thing. Do we need them to be green, and red, and purple, and another shade of green? And the answer is, probable, no. All we need to do, we need to catch the eye somewhere, and then we need to lead that eye with our arrows towards the end. So we probably need to highlight the beginning and the end, because this is what problems are. So, one of those boxes could be big, red and bright. But the rest probably shouldn't be. Next, we add those connecting lines, arrows and we see that it is becoming way too busy. We need to somehow separate those connecting lines from the boxes. And the easiest things to do would be to dim of course those connecting lines are so much better. Now they are unobtrusive, they just lead the eye without drawing too much attention. Then we can add the text back and we can properly align it to the left. In this particular example because just way too much text. And we can as a final touch, we can add names to those columns because those meaningful names to meaningful columns. Remember we need to have three sort of clear focus points. And they think the end result is much better, than it was before. This is what you can achieve with optimization. Less connection lines, less fills. The same amount of text actually, much lighter design, much easier on the eyes. And a final example. Is not like there's too much text here, but there's just way too much color. Everything is blue round, dark blue, and green, and orange, and yellow. And apparent the most important things are grey here, I know it's Russian but you can actually fill this out for yourself. Because the most important things here are marked with those bright yellow numbers. Unfortunately, those bright yellow numbers compete with the rest of the colored boxes. So they don't seem all that bright in contrast. So what we need to do, we need to dim move to background everything else. And we need those gray boxes to really stand out. And this, I think is a much better design which tells almost the same story. And it tells it so much better than before. To conclude, when you are designing a process diagram you know that you need to create three to five focal points. But with a process diagram you really need to really think about the meaning of the diagram, what exactly we're trying to communicate. What are those most important focal points? It's easy with hierarchy, not so much with boxes diagrams and you need to dim or remove everything else.
