Clear bright white and nostalgic colored string lights adorn otherwise commonplace trees and shrubbery on nearly every block this time of year. Neighborhoods and shopping centers look like beautiful storybook villages as we pass, enjoying our commutes a little bit more in spite of the holiday traffic.

On my drive home last night, the thought occurred to me that data is a lot like holiday lights. When organized in an attractive and appealing dashboard design, the power of data is enhanced and can be even more powerful and meaningful. Data, when displayed in a striking new way can be more intriguing to us, and as a result, we’re more likely to engage with it. Perhaps we would have missed the very same data had it been organized and presented in a less pleasing fashion.

By presenting data in a way in which our psyche is predisposed to receive it, we allow our audience to see and hear the story that we have to share, and then help them gain clarity and understanding around the data. It is then that we have their attention and the opportunity to make a point, deliver a pitch, close a sale or ask them to make a decision.

Sharing information in a context in which people are open and most receptive to receiving it is intuitive. It’s human nature to appreciate attractive things, especially pretty lights, to give and receive beautifully and thoughtfully wrapped packages and to look forward to the promise of a brand new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Juice Team!

When it comes to business dashboards, the gauge chart is often a case of indulgence without restraint. It can be equal parts waste of valuable pixels, low information, and visually deceptive. It would be a lot smarter to use a bullet chart — but who wants to pick the the fruit plate for desert?

Gauges have undeniable appeal to dashboard designers everywhere. Perhaps it is the “skeuomorphism” of a gauge chart. That is, it borrows from the look of something we are familiar with as a way to make us feel comfortable or understand its purpose.

In the past, I’ve fought the good fight against these charts. Now I’m resigned to the fact that eradication is impossible. If that’s true, can we at least find some ways to make them better through design? Tone down the brilliant sheen and high-contrast colors; turn up the information conveyed.

First we can start by making them look better. Web designer Christian Annyas shared a beautiful gallery of Chevrolet speedometer designs across the years. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Christian even offers a decent argument for gauges over simply showing a value:

“It’s easy for a driver to get used to a needle that rises and passes numbers that are located on fixed positions. A quick glance is all it takes to see and understand the value it represents.”

Let’s take one of those designs, overlay a few necessary data elements, and see if we can create something worth looking at.

1. Start with an classy Chevrolet design that lays out so as not to take up too much valuable vertical space
2. Add subtle indicator of good and bad zones with green and red dots
3. Show the current value with a bold label
4. Display distribution of recent history to communicate how the value has changed

While this chart is still far from efficient in its data-to-ink ratio, at least it communicates the small amount of information effectively. Any ideas for how to make it better?

Since we can all use a little calibration every once in a while to stay in tune, we thought we’d post it again, with a reminder that you can access this oldie but goody, along with other materials on the Juice Analytics resources page anytime — and that all of these materials are available to you gratis.

Should you have a friend, colleague or know someone who could benefit from a little dashboard design “religion”, feel free to let them know where you found yours.

Well, we did just that. And, our effort resulted in a video to share with people about what we do here at Juice.  We hope you like it.

(P.S. Thank your kid for the artwork covering that stain on your wall — and for the great analogy.)

November 1 & 2, Juice is going to be in Boston.  So, if you’ll be in town and you’d like to meet up, reach out and let us know.  Or if you happen to know someone in the Boston area who is into data visualization — or should be — take this opportunity to reach out to them.  Just “Say Hello to Someone From Massachusetts” and invite them to ping us.

There’s a lot to catch up on from industry news to the latest here at Juice, and we look forward to hearing about what’s going on in your corner of the data viz world.

If you’ll be in the Boston area and would like to connect with us, leave us a comment or send an email to info@juiceanalytics.com.

“Cheers!”

If you’ve ever tried to get anywhere in Atlanta at 5:30 p.m. on a Thursday, you’re painfully aware of the seemingly perpetual problem we have with traffic.  Last year, Atlanta was ranked as the 4th worst city for commuters.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta Map:

That’s why Juice teamed up with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution(AJC) to help metro Atlantans better understand and visualize the magnitude of the initiative which encompasses projects across a 10-county region at a proposed cost of $6.14 billion. If voters approve the new transportation referendum in Summer 2012, it will be the biggest single transportation effort in the region in over 40 years. The referendum would add an extra one percent multi-county regional sales tax to fund the mammoth initiative over a 10-year period.

Juice designed a detailed map to accompany the AJC’s three-page cover story in order to help metro Atlantans better understand and visualize the magnitude of the initiative. The map provides readers with a bird’s eye view of the 118 proposed projects on the current draft of the referendum. The alpha-numeric coordinates along the “x” and “y” axis help readers find their bearings, while the color and pattern-coded keys help them easily identify degrees of traffic congestion and decipher roadway projects from transit projects, bike and pedestrian projects from aviation projects.

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to our community to do what we can to help solve one of the region’s key challenges when it comes to growth, economy, and environment. We’re looking forward to seeing how this story plays out and are hopeful that visualizations such as this one will help voters and decision makers alike consume, process the massive amounts of data driving this effort, and act.

Unfortunately, the AJC only ran the map and accompanying story in the subscriber edition of the paper, so I’m not able to share a link.

To all of you who submitted entries for the Strata Vizathlon Visualization Contest, we thank each and every one of you, and appreciate your tremendous efforts.

Along with the team at O’Reilly Media, we are proud to announce the winners of the 2011 Strata Vizathlon Contest.

Best in Show:

Eating Constraints by Dane Summers (submitted in “Dig In” Category)

Category Winner: Delicious Storylines

Do You Want to Eat This by Team Data Distillery (Anita Lillie, Kris Chan and Romy Misra)

Category Winners: Dig In

Interactive Food Analysis by Josh Tapley

Food Facts Exploration by Kyle Foreman

The “Best in Show” winner, Dane Summers, will be announced at the O’Reilly Strata NY Summit in New York, NY September 20 or 21, 2011.

Congratulations again to our winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. You can see all the entries at the Strata Vizathlon website.

P.S. Tickets are still available for the O’Reilly Strata NY Conference. You can receive a 30% discount if you register using the discount code “JUICE” on the registration page. (Note: The discount has increased to 30% since the original blog post.)

On questions of vocabulary and style in written communication, there seems to be agreement about the pursuit of simplicity and ensuring that  the message, not the words, take center stage. Below are three common writing guidelines, and what they mean for your data communication choices.

1. Smaller, simpler words

“The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.” — George Eliot

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” — C.S. Lewis

My experience is that the simplest visualization  techniques (bar, line, table, single number, even pie) are effective for 80% of data communication. Like simple words, you can be assured that your audience will quickly understand what you mean. Refrain from advanced visualizations like treemaps and animated bubble charts but for the special situations where the breadth and nuance of your data requires more visual sophistication.

Nevertheless, there is value in knowing what can be done in data visualization. Exposing yourself to advanced visualization techniques (start here: Infosthetic, Flowing Data, New York Times visualizations) offers similar benefits to having a large vocabulary.

2. Too many words is a symptom of poor understanding

“If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well.” — Albert Einstein

“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.” — Samuel Johnson

Most people don’t really want to hear you think out loud. In data presentation, it’s tempting to think out loud by showing all the data in every conceivable way.  We’ve all been a recipient of that awful 80-page PowerPoint report with seemly infinite variations on the same data.

Form an opinion. Lay it out there. Don’t wander around – or worse, allow your audience to wander too much off the path. Here’s a favorite example from the New York Times. This analytical tool knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and gets to the point immediately.

3. Words are for communication, not show

“Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.” — H.W. Fowler

It’s not about the data or the visualization; it’s about the message you are trying to communicate.  This is not simply a question of efficient communication; it is also a question of perception. When you use unnecessarily complex visualizations, you draw attention to the wrong things. Here’s a good example of a chart that is more about the chart than the data:

You’re officially out of excuses.  With Hurricane Irene knocking out power and Internet connections all along the East Coast this weekend, we have decided to give you another week to submit your entry for the Strata Vizathlon Visualization Contest.  The new deadline is Sunday, September 4, 2011 at 11:59:59 p.m.

You Could Win a Trip to NYC.

The data visualization contest leads up to O’Reilly’s Strata New York Summit September 19 – 23.  The Overall “Best in Show” winner will receive round-trip air transportation,  hotel accommodations and a complimentary pass to the Strata NY Summit and Strata Conference in NYC, and will be announced as the “Best in Show” winner at the Strata Summit September 20 or 21, 2011.  See complete Rules and prize information.

Two Categories.  You Choose Which One to Enter.

There are two challenges: 1) Delicious Storylines and 2) Dig In. Enter one or enter both.  But enter.  There’s still time.

Good luck!

If you’re looking for a more complex visualization example that’s more infographic-y than the ones we’ve been covering over the past few days, take a look at this very well done example done for GE by Fathom and Ben Fry entitled “Powering the Kitchen”.

Fathom has taken a story-like approach with this one by laying it with each tab/page a different interactive view into the data. We like it because it allows the user to explore and investigate the same data from several different, but controlled perspectives. It’s all topped off with nice use of color and contrast to make sure the viewer is looking at the most important fact on the page.

Keep working and don’t forget that all visualizations are due on Sunday 8/28 before midnight, Eastern time.