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More Information per Pixel!

In my last post I suggested some chart selection rules as an alternative to Godin’s Silly Rules for Great Graphs. Jerome commented:

[...] on a slide, you want to convey one message. your graph must NOT carry any information that can be interpreted differently than the point you are trying to make. the corollary is that in virtually all cases, you should display as little data points as possible: 1 if possible, 2 but no more than 3. If you need more than 3 data points, use handouts. [...]

which is very much in line with what Seth Godin said in his famous post about Chart Rules:

No, the reason you put a chart in a presentation is to tell a story. A single story, one story per chart

Why should a presentation display as little data as possible? Why should a slide contain only one chart? I demand More Information Per Pixel. Why not have a data-rich chart in a slide - no, even a couple of charts to support my message?

My friend Rolf Hichert has a totally different design philosophy.

Components of good presentations slides:

• A clear message
• A clear title (should be a complete sentence, including units like K$)
• Each slide to conveys only one message
• More tables and charts to support the message
• Choose the right chart type
• Use arrows, color etc. to highlight the message

Look at this sample taken from Rolf’s web site:

The slide has a clear title that conveys one message: "Further positive Development in Frankfurt, Vienna and Graz - Action needed in Lausanne and Linz".

The slide contains small multiple charts to support the message, where Rolf has chosen a line chart to emphasize trends or patterns. The problematic regions mentioned in the title are colored in red; those that made the CEO happy in green.

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Chart Rules, As Simple as Possible, But Not Any Simpler!

In chart design it’s good to make things simple, but you certainly should avoid oversimplification. As Einstein said:

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler"

Seth Godin presented in his blog The three laws of great graphs:

1. One Story
2. No Bar Charts
3. Motion

Effective chart design rules are simple, but reducing it to this set of 3 rules certainly is an over-oversimplification.

Particularly rule 2 is flawed. Seth details rule 2:

"NO BAR CHARTS
Bar charts are dramatically overrated, primarily because they’re the first choice in many graphing programs.

The problem with bar charts is that they should either be line/area charts (when graphing a change over time, like unemployment rates) or they should be a simple pie chart (when comparing two or three items at the same scale).

Jorge, Kaiser and Jon already wrote some critical posts about this rule, where Jon suggested to replace rule 2 with

Choose Chart Types Intelligently

We are working tightly together with Stephen Few on a new product that helps business users creating effective charts with Excel and are therefore we are quite familiar with Stephen’s design principles.

Its an easy to learn set of rules

1. Determine the relationship you want to display

2. Determine if you want to emphasize individual values or the overall pattern
3. Determine the chart type

Armed with this set of rules you would rule out Seth’s pie chart, and use the bar chart in the appropriated business context.

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Hermann Grids, An optical Illusion Best Avoided

An interesting optical illusion is the so-called Hermann Grid illusion: the effect of seeing gray dots at the intersections of a black grid on a white background or a white grid on a black background.

While it’s an interesting optical illusion, it’s something we should avoid in management reporting:

Tables formatted with medium or thick black or gray borders tend to produce Hermann Grids. Just scan the table above and you should see the gray dots in the grid intersections.

To avoid this unpleasant and distracting effect, and to maximize the data-ink ratio follow this simple but very effective table design rule:

• Avoid using dark and heavy grids
• Use light gray grids instead

Above is the same table with light gray borders. This eliminates the Hermann Grid illusion and – by de-emphasizing the grid –  puts more emphasis on the numbers.

Here are some images I found on Google Image Search that show how popular it is to put your data behind Hermann Grids:

So I hope you are with me – get rid of the heavy grids and free your data!

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Color in Motion

A very, very cool Flash Movie about Color in Motion. An interactive Experience of Color Communication and Color Symbolism of Claudia Cortes.

Enjoy !

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Management Dashboard

Dashboard for Management

Executive Management Team Dashboard

Most management dashboards succeed in providing information. But the exceptional ones succeed in “at a glance” part of it while maintaining the deep diving capabilities

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http://www.connectusers.com/community/profile/dashboard/
http://www.joomlart.com/forums/usercp.php
http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?action=profile

http://www.ultrashock.com/member/exceldashboard/
http://www.worlds-luxury-guide.com/users/dashboard
http://leftinthewest.com/user/excledashboard/
http://www.thegreengrid.org/Home/Forum/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=4476

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/dashboard

http://www.vernier.com/discussion/index.php?action=profile;u=1092
http://www.colipaforum.eu/index.php?action=profile;u=545
http://www.pixelpost.org/forum/member.php?u=17047

http://forum.biblio.com/index.php?action=profile;u=11844
http://cyberbully411.com/discuss-cyberbullying/index.php?action=profile;u=1724
http://debate-central.ncpa.org/forum/profile.php?section=personality&id=14966

http://thewinger.com/mboard/index.php?action=profile;u=1593
http://www.elecard.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=24557
http://www.civnet.org/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=951

http://osticket.com/forums/member.php?u=8091&tab=aboutme&simple=1
http://forum.digsby.com/profile.php?section=personality&id=10400
http://userscripts.org/users/135702
http://eater.com/users/32276
http://www.sparknotes.com/account/exceldashboard
http://tecto.gps.caltech.edu/forum/profile.php?section=personality&id=19126
http://weplan.parks.vic.gov.au/?q=user/327

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