Week 6: Business Reporting, Visual Analytics & Dashboards (Part 2) & Story Telling

Visual perception in Pre-attentive Processing

Form

Position

Color

Motion

Hue

Intensity

Orientation

Line length

Line width

Flicker

2-D Location

Added marks

Size

Enclosure

Shape

Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

Principle of Enclosure

Principle of Closure

Principle of Similarity

Principle of Continuity

Principle of Proximity

Principle of Connection

Dashboard design considerations

Reduce the non-data pixels

Enhance the data pixels

Eliminate all unnecessary non-data pixels

De-emphasize and regularize the non-data pixels that remain

Eliminate all unnecessary data pixels

Highlight the most important data pixels that remain

Unnecessary borders around sections of data fragment the display

Avoid complete borders when a single set of axes would adequately define the space

Eliminate graphics that provide nothing but decoration

Unneccesary fill colors to separate sections of the display are distracting

Instructions take up valuable space. Hence, they can be displayed only when needed through a separate screen or pop-up menu

Navigational controls should not take up more space than the visual displays

Gradients of fill color both on the bars and background add distracting non-data pixels

Grid lines in graphs are not useful

Axis lines and gridlines can be useful but should be muted

3D should be avoided when the added dimension of depth doesn't represent actual data

Removing less relevant data

Condensing data through: Summaries, Exception

Multi-foci displays

Information that is always important can be emphasized using static means

Information that is only important at the moment requires a dynamic means of emphasis

Layout of dashboard should not change dynamically

Different regions of a dashboard has different degrees of visual emphasis

Story Telling

Definition: A fact-based story has to be factual. detailed-orientated and data-driven but not overwhelming the audience with data and facts without context

5 steps to creating a good story

Step 3: Be visual

Step 4: Making it easy for your audience and you

Step 2: Be authentic

Step 5: Invite and direct discussion

Step 1: Think of your analysis as a story

Why?

Interactive: people put themselves into stories

Support an arguement

Give vision to what the future look like

See the whole where there are disparate parts

Make sense and order of the data

What makes a good story?

Challenge is believable

Hurdles to overcome

Involves characters

Outcome or prognosis is clear