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

Performing Dashboards

Provide visual displays of important information that is consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that information can be digested at a single glance and easily drilled in and further explored

Limits of Short-Term Memory

Iconic memory

Short-Term Memory

Long-Term Memory

Permanent

Visual memory buffer

Limited storage capacity

Visual Perception

4 categories (pre-attentive attributes)

color

form

position

motion

6 principles for grouping, separating, emphasizing data

  1. Principle of Closure
  1. Principle of Similarity
  1. Principal of Proximity
  1. Principle of Continuity
  1. Principle of Enclosure
  1. Principle of Connection

key goals and steps

  1. reduce the non-data pixels
  1. enhance the data pixel

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

storytelling

why do story telling?

make sense and order of the data

see the whole where there are disparate parts

give vision to what the future can look like

interactive - people put themselves into stories

support an argument

what make a good story

involves character

challenge is believable

hurdles to overcome

outcome or prognosis is clear

5 steps to creating a good story

  1. Be visual
  1. Make it easy for your audience and you
  1. Be authentic
  1. Invite and direct discussion
  1. Think of your analysis as a story