Juice Analytics

I need your help. I want to ask my wife if she’d like to go see a movie with me. Which way do you think I should go:

Option 1:

“Interested in catching the 7PM showing of Hunger Games at the AMC?”

Option 2:

Time: 7PM

Movie: Hunger Games

Location: AMC

Attend?

Well, we both know the answer: she might be inclined to take me up on my offer either way, but with the second option, she might also be inclined to make me sit on a different row.

We know that when we talk to people, we have to do so in a way that feels warm and personal. Why is it then, that when we design systems for people, we want to woo them with option 2?

Imagine a sales report where you select a date range, the type of transaction you are interested in and the resulting metrics. It might look something like this:

Start date: 1/15/2012

End date: 4/2/2012

Type of transaction: Closed deals

Revenue: $1,500,000.

Number of deals: 6

On the other hand, why don’t we treat these sort of data interactions more personable; more like a conversation? Take that same report and re-imagine it in the metaphor of a sentence. Something perhaps like this:

Between 1/15/2012 and today, there have been 6 deals that closed, totaling $1.5m in revenue.

Nifty? We think so. To see some examples and learn more, check out this latest addition to our design principles library.

Here’s to treating people like… well, um… people!

It’s been a long road. A road fraught with jubilation. A road fraught with tears. A road fraught with… well, you get the idea.

Now we have the final two. It is iPhone over Wikipedia and Google Search over Amazon Store. And not even close:

(click to see the semi-finals results)

So, who will take it all? Will it be iPhone or Google Search on the throne:

(click to see and download a larger version)

Now vote! Remember, your picks should be based on:

• influence: changed how we thought about a problem and future technology solutions
• innovative: new and different, why didn’t I think of that?
• adoption: pervasive, widely used

You can vote for your favorites on the Technology Bracketology championship game. We’ll report on the championship results on Tuesday, April 3rd. Stay tuned!

iPhone. Wikipedia. Google Search. Amazon Store. Now it gets interesting. The winners from each of the four regions, pitted against each other. Nerds versus Dweebs; Geeks versus Dorks. What could be more exciting? (It reminds me of that time in high school when the chess club ambushed the french horns behind the bleachers: lots of broken glasses and mechanical pencils.)

Here are the results from Round 4:

(Round 4 results - region champions)

And here’s the updated bracket:

(The final four! Click to download a copy)

Now vote! Remember, your picks should be based on:

• influence: changed how we thought about a problem and future technology solutions
• innovative: new and different, why didn’t I think of that?
• adoption: pervasive, widely used

You can vote for your favorites on the Technology Bracketology Round 5. We’ll report on Round 5 results on Saturday, March 31st, and we’ll run the final championship round on Monday April, 2nd!

Feel like the NCAA tournament is going stale, with the same teams advancing every year? Technology Bracketology is the cure for what ails you. This weekend saw four upsets in eight games. It was a strong weekend for Google as 3 of their products made the final eight. The big story is Cinderella Google Maps who has crushed every foe thus far, but faces behemoth iPhone this week.

Now it’s time to get down to business and vote for the Technology Bracketology final four.

Here are the results from Round 3:

(Click to see the round 3 results)

Here are the 8 who want to be 4:

(Round 4 bracket - click to download your own copy)

You know the drill: now it’s time to vote!! Don’t forget to pick your winners based on:

• influence: changed how we thought about a problem and future technology solutions
• innovative: new and different, why didn’t I think of that?
• adoption: pervasive, widely used

You can vote for your favorites on the Technology Bracketology Round 4. We’ll report on Round 4 results on Thursday, March 29th.

What could be possibly sweeter than Juice? The Technology Bracketology Sweet 16, of course! And oh! how sweet it is!

The 64 became 32; who became 16. Sixteen technologies that have turned their competitor’s lemonade into lemons. Check it out:

(Sweet Round 2 results - no sugar added)

Here are a couple of games that we found particularly interesting:

Number 2 seed iTunes came out on top of 10 seeded Pandora, but not by as much as we might have expected. Pandora clinched a full 39% of the votes. Cool.

The truly amazing story was how much number 5 seeded GPS crushed number 4 seeded Twitter with 88% of the votes. (Hmmm… sounds like a sweet tweet in the making.)

So, here comes round 3:

(Bracket ready for round 3)

Now it’s time to have at it and vote for your favorite 8! Don’t forget to pick your winners based on:

• influence: changed how we thought about a problem and future technology solutions
• innovative: new and different, why didn’t I think of that?
• adoption: pervasive, widely used

You can vote for your favorites on the Technology Bracketology Round 3. We’ll report on Round 3 results on Monday, March 25th.

And the 16 shall become 8. Sweet!

(By the way we couldn’t help but to point out our favorite comment from one of our voters: “I think that Juice needs to acquire one of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners of the tourney and get a group picture with said winners.” Thanks for your feedback. We’ll get right on that!)

While you guys were watching #15 seeded Lehigh spank #2 seeded Duke this weekend, we were keeping our eyes on the Technology Bracketology slugfest. Round 1 is over and here are the results:

(Click to see the full results!)

While we didn’t quite see the techno-version of the Duke/Lehigh schooling, we did have a few upsets of our own. We were amused to find TiVo showing the Prius how it’s done, but were just plain shocked by Flash’s refusal to be obliterated by Apple’s iOS. Notice any other unexpected playas?

Here’s the updated bracket showing those results:

(Results from Round 1 voting)

And now for Round 2!

Again, pick your winners based on:

• influence: changed how we thought about a problem and future technology solutions
• innovative: new and different, why didn’t I think of that?
• adoption: pervasive, widely used

You can vote for your favorites here: Technology Bracketology Round 2.

We’ll report on Round 2 results on Thursday, March 22nd. Go!

Happy Monday! Have you been thinking about your entry in the O’Reilly Strata Data Visualization Contest that we’re running?

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.

Yesterday we kicked off our O’Reilly Strata Visualization Contest and today we thought it might help to get the creative juices flowing to talk about a visualization that didn’t take complex or expensive tools to create some really interesting results.

For those of you who have been following Juice for a while, you know that we’re huge fans of the work that the New York Times Visualization Lab does. Rarely do they address a topic that we don’t think significantly improves our understanding of a topic.

Well, a couple of years ago, we were compelled to attempt to replicate a particularly interesting NYT visualization called the OECD Business Cycle Clock… using Excel.

“That’s crazy!” you say. “Couldn’t be done” you say. Well, for all you doubters out there, take a look at this blog post.

So, when you’re trying to figure out how to create that amazing viz that will win you a trip to New York City and admission to the Strata conference, keep in mind that you don’t have to be a wizard at developing with Flex, Protoviz, or D3 to create some really nice looking results. You might just need to start with Excel. There are plenty of Excel samples on our site, and you can check out Jorge Camoes’ site as well for more great examples.

Good luck!!

(As a footnote, I have to point out that it’s our opinion that the hard part of this visualization is not dependent on the technology used to implement, but rather the design thought required to lay out the solution to begin with – kudos to the NYT design team for that inspiration! Remember to start with the end in mind and you’re sure to create something much more about the results and less about the tech.)

We’re back from beautiful Seattle having immersed ourselves in the data visualization party known as the 2010 Tableau Customer Conference. It was a wonderfully planned and executed conference during which we met lots of great Tableau users, exchanged data visualization tips, and learned a bunch about what Tableau is up to in version 6.0 (the most highly anticipated enhancement is no doubt the 100x performance improvement of the data engine.) The folks at Tableau are definitely ramping up for some great things and it was a privilege to be part of it.

As most of you know our core business is about building custom information applications to make information accessible to everyone, not just analysts. But we do so love the work they’re doing over at Tableau and keep a close eye on them. As a result, when they extended an offer for us to speak, we were thrilled.

Following our sessions, I was all excited about the reaction we had gotten from our attendees when one of my coworkers pointed out that I had made a terrible mistake: I neglected to give proper credit to Stephen Few. Part of the content that we covered was about how to effectively position elements in an information display to make it easy for the brain to understand what it’s seeing. To do this we discussed “6 Principles of Visual Context”:

• Principle of Proximity – Things that are visually close to each other are related
• Principle of Similarity – Things that look like each other (size, color, shape) are related
• Principle of Enclosure – Things that are enclosed by a shape are related
• Principle of Closure – We see incomplete shapes as complete
• Principle of Continuity – Things that are aligned are related
• Principle of Connection – Things that are visually connected are related

A great set of guidelines that explain so much about why some things make visual sense and others don’t.

However, in the heat of the moment, I neglected to point out that these principles are based on some very nice work Stephen performed a while back. We’re big fans of his and want to make sure we give credit where credit’s due. So, if you you’re not familiar with these principles, or haven’t reviewed them recently, please check them out. Very powerful stuff.

As far as the conference goes, if you’re a Tableau user, you should plan on attending next year. At about 700 attendees, it was nearly twice as big as the 2009 conference, and if the passion and excitement of Christian Chabbot is any indication, next year will be even bigger and even better.