The last several weeks here at Kristian Andersen + Associates have been a very busy time indeed. Last week, as we wrapped up our work for ExactTarget’s Connections User Conference, we decided to treat ourselves to a new office toy – a Nintendo Wii and a copy of Rock Band 2. Perfect for unwinding after a hard day’s work, or simply to make complete fools of ourselves when the mood takes us.

I’d already been playing Rock Band for a couple of months, the guitar being my instrument of choice. I’ve managed to work my way up to playing on Hard level, and even on Expert on a few of the more simple songs. Late Saturday night I had the opportunity to play Guitar Hero, Activision’s alternative and rival to Harmonix’ Rock Band series. Without thinking I jumped straight into a song on Hard level, only to be booed off about a minute in. I initially put this down to not having played the song before (some songs are title exclusives and aren’t available on the competitor’s product). I then restarted on Medium level, this time only just making it through to the end of the song. This time I blamed bad guitar calibration. However, as time passed I realized that the owner of the game and guitar seemed to be doing just fine on Hard and even Expert level. That left only one cause for my lack of performance – the several bottles of Heineken and pints of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. I decided to pass on Guitar Hero for the rest of the night and went home to sleep off my shame.

On Sunday I picked up my Rock Band guitar and played a few songs, again on Hard and Expert level, getting through with high 90s percentage scores. Then it hit me. The reason why I was no good at Guitar Hero had nothing to do with not knowing the song, nothing to do with bad calibration, and maybe only a little to do with the alcohol content of my blood that night. It had almost everything to do with data visualization.

Playing guitar in Rock Band and Guitar Hero works pretty much the same way. On screen there is a fretboard, like that on a real guitar, with five tracks (or strings) on which song notes travel towards you. When these notes reach the hit bar at the bottom of the screen, you hit the strum bar. Simple. These song notes are essentially data that is presented to you over time as the song progresses. The big difference between the two is in the way this data is visually presented.

Back in August, Nathan and I attended a seminar by Edward Tufte (a recap of which can be read here). He opened his talk with a video of Stephen Malinowski’s Music Animation Machine, an example of which you can see below. It is a beautifully simple representation of musical data, and strikingly familiar to fans of Rock Band.

The quote below from Nathan’s post has perfectly summarized my opinion on the main reason Rock Band triumphs over Guitar Hero.

If you’re having to dress up your content or data with superfluous visuals, not only are you making the content harder to decipher, you’re manipulating your audience in a negative way.

Rock Band’s notes are represented by simple colored bars, as opposed to Guitar Hero’s bulbous, spinning UFOs that are so bulky they almost obscure the notes that follow behind. Guitar Hero’s fretboard is also harder to follow: it is set at a shallower angle, the strings are difficult to make out and the timing bars aren’t as obvious. Earlier versions overlaid visual effects on the fretboard, further distracting you from the data, but thankfully everything is much cleaner with the latest release. Admittedly Guitar Hero uses three-finger chords more liberally, and some song sections are a little more difficult, but the playing a song ends up as an exercise in staying calm under pressure (fending off the alien attack), rather than being able to enjoy the music. Transfer the raw data from one to the other and I know which one I’d have an easier time following.

The lesson here is simple: don’t dress up data or use superfluous visuals that will detract from the information you are trying to present. If the content is strong enough it shouldn’t need the visuals to scream at you unnecessarily. That diagram doesn’t need swooping, overlapping rainbow gradient arrows and three-dimensional boxes; that ‘Sign Up’ button doesn’t need to flash lime green and bright red; and those song notes certainly don’t need dressing up as spinning UFOs.

For the time being we’ll stick with Rock Band. Give us a few months and we’ll be able to handle anything… except maybe if it’s this hard: