Juice Analytics

The Juice Analytics team will be in Nashville July 9 – 11, 2012 and while we can’t carry a tune, we’ll have with us an interactive demo of our hosted reporting platform to share. Of course, we’ll also share the latest around dashboard and interface design, as well as data visualization, in general, along with other stuff that interests you.

Reach out if you’d like to meet up while we’re in town.

(P.S. If other cities have pent up demand for Juice, reach out and we’ll consider a visit.)

Cheers!

Is the Score or the Rainbow More Memorable?

A cool afternoon rain was the only thing damper than the spirits of the 12-year-olds who shuffled off the field. With the score still lit up on the wooden scoreboard, the coaches yelled to the boys as they struggled to lift their heads so they might catch a glimpse of a rainbow as it rose from the fence in front of them.

The players of both the winning and losing teams stood there on the wet, steamy grass, frozen in place, in awe of the sight of a rainbow that mystically appeared as if painted on the sky just for them to see. For them, it was an atta boy, pat on the back, a perfect way to wrap up a hard fought double header in which the score had not quite represented the effort that the losing team had given, where the stats failed to tell the tale that brought these two teams together on the hallowed Cooperstown soil.

That’s the thing about numbers. When left to their own devices, they can feel as cold as digits on a lonely scoreboard. They say nothing of the teams who trained for months, played together game after game, relinquished their Saturdays and played nearly perfect seasons just to get to the tournament.

Numbers alone tell us nothing of context. When we have something particularly meaningful to say, images help us share it best. Dashboards and data visualizations bring to life presentations in which we can engage in two-way conversations with our audience making the story around our data more memorable, impactful and effective than any spreadsheet or table of numbers we can put in front of them.

What will your audience remember? The numbers, the final score? Share visually, and they will remember the rainbow and the sunshine that most certainly will follow.

Special thanks to Peter Bielan, my significant other, for inspiring this blog by sharing this photo that he shot during his son’s baseball team pilgrimage to Cooperstown, NY this week.  

Every day, there are thousands of discussions in businesses that rely on data for answers. Many of these conversations fall into the same patterns where the data is unique, but the questions and goals are the same.

• How well is our ad campaign delivering?
• What’s the ROI for that capital project?
• Who are my top performing sales people?

At Juice, we’re interested in finding the common situations where people use data as the centerpoint of a discussion. Then we build tools to make those conversations more productive.

One interesting conversation for us is the one that occurs between start-up founders and investors. Due to the sensitivity involved, its extra important that both sides have a shared view of company valuation and projections. After seeing this conversation play out with spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides, we thought it could be a lot more productive if there was a simple, interactive tool to explore scenarios.

If you’re thinking about taking investment or talking to investors, our company valuation tool let’s you to test different assumptions and the see the financial results. Here’s how it works:

1. Set pre-investment assumptions. Input how much the company is worth before an investment and how much investment you are looking for.

2. Add assumptions about revenue and/or profit growth. Choose the number of years for your projection, then drag the trend lines to reflect your model for growth.

3. Choose valuation model. Do you want to set a valuation based on revenues or EBITDA? You’ll need to adjust the appropriate multiple.

As an extra bonus, we have a feature to see what the valuation scenario means for the current owners of the company. Turn the owner valuation toggle to “on” in the upper right corner.

We also have a short video of the tool in action.

There you have it: a simple tool for considering company valuation scenarios. We’ll be the first to admit that the valuation model is relatively straightforward. There is no support for liquidation preference, complex pre-investment financing structures, option pools, or how to repay your mom’s loan. Nevertheless, we hope it serves as a productive starting point for discussions with investors.

This was developed using Bret Victor’s Tangle JS library and D3.js for the visualization.

Most dashboards just talk and don’t listen. Have you ever been in a “conversation” with someone and they talk 90% of the time. They ask you a question and while you’re 15 seconds into answering they interrupt and starting offloading their mountains of insight. It’s mostly about them. And their consideration for you? Not so much.

That is what most dashboards do. Blah, blah, blah. What if…

What if the information presentations we interacted with actually acknowledged who they’re talking to, listened more, and talked less? What if we were to replace the focus on data with a conversation and a way of working out the complexities of data between two or more people.

To do this properly, think about what a “good conversation” is. Here are a few characteristics we came up with:

• The people have similar experience around a topic; so they know what they’re talking about, but because every person is unique, they’ve gathered unique insight that can be shared. The varying, educated perspective keeps the conversation interesting.
• The one doesn’t overly interrupt the other. Sure there may be reasons to interrupt here and there, but, if interruption is the norm, it quickly gets as annoying (and rude) as your cable news political analyst.
• There is a sense of genuine care for what the other person is saying because, well… there is a genuine sense for what the other person is saying. Too often people get caught up in the “tricks” of networking and small talk and “the hook.” What if people actually respond to what’s genuine?
• Distractions are minimal. One person isn’t constantly checking their phone or entertaining other interests. People are very adept at sensing interest. They do this by reading you: body language, eyes, word usage, how you breathe, pace of speech, and inflection to name a few. If you are actually interested in hearing what another else has to say, they will know.
• You trust the other person. There is an assumed authenticity about each other. This is slow to build and easy to break.

So there’s a few qualities of good conversation, but why? People don’t often stop to think about why they enjoy good conversation. Let’s look at the benefits:

• Your perspective is sharpened. You don’t have to live through the same experience the other person did in order to benefit from their insight. That is, if you trust what they are saying. This is a big time saver! Imagine if no one acted on anything but personally experienced information. You may know some people like that. They flounder, spending more time re-discovering rather than benefiting.
• Your momentum is accelerated. Good conversations with trustworthy friends or experts is one of the biggest ways we overcome obstacles and keep momentum in life.
• A dependable relationship is formed. You know if you ever want to talk about “x” topic again, where to turn. As the trust is built in that conversation, you are also setting this person as someone you can turn for solid footing when future steps are required.
• Great conversations lighten your burden. Joking isn’t trivial, in fact, some the most serious conversations benefit from humor. It promotes an open mind and releases misplaced pressure over circumstances.

Now, why is a designer at a visualization, dashboarding, software company talking about all these warm fuzzies?! Presenting information is about people. We’re adamant about that at Juice. We’ve been focusing on what people actually want out of their data for a long time. Why? Because it’s a hole in the market and it’s fundamental to knowing what people both need and want to see out of “information experiences” they encounter. Until we appreciate the qualities and benefits of good conversations, we don’t have a firm foundation for sharing and communicating data.

You’re saying, “Well, that’s all fine and good, but how in the world does this play out in an application or dashboard?.” I’m glad you asked. This concept is something of deep interest at Juice and the thoughts here represent the tip of the iceberg. As we actively work through these concepts, we’ll look to provide practical examples in the coming months.

Questions
What are some of the qualities of an enjoyable conversation you’ve had this week?
How did it affect your day?
In what ways could you imagine your dashboard just talking and not listening?

Dig Deeper
This talk by John Cleese (of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) is one of the best on creativity I’ve ever seen, and it speaks to the seriousness of humor, for the jokesters among you.

Evaluate and apply some related design principles to your application: Make it conversational, Use common language, Consider data comfort and expertise.

(A conversation about data)

The other day my seven year old asked, “How do you say indigo in Japanese?” I said, “Why do you want to know?” His response: “Just curious.”

I love every interaction with my kids, but especially the ones where they surprise me. This particular interaction got me thinking about how tightly linked certain questions are to specific conversations.

When it comes to data, it’s no different. The conversation that surrounds a question is as important as the question itself. Both have context, a set of relevant questions and hopefully a little curiosity. You would think that because of the similarities between data and conversations, that a conversation about data would be easy. Unfortunately, not so much. Every day we see folks wrestling with how to have a conversation about their data.

Think about it. How many “data-based” conversations have you sat through that are REALLY overstuffed Power Point presentations, metric-filled reports or chart-engorged dashboards? Not a conversation, but more like an annoying advertisement. People are so afraid of “The Indigo Question”, that they try to answer EVERY possible question by pommelling their audience with lots and lots of data or worse, innumerable slides.

How about trying this: communicate with data by thinking of it in the context of a conversation: Ask questions; listen to answers; don’t try to cast the conversation before it happens, but allow it to form as it takes place.

Start with understanding the questions that your audience will want to know about your data:

• How has number of bench presses for defensive tackles changed over time?
• Where are my sales coming from?
• Do field goal attempts drive total points per game?

The questions give you great insight into how you would want to show the results. For instance,

Changes over time are shown by trend lines,

comparisons can be shown with distributions,

and outliers might be revealed in a bubble chart.

In the coming months you’ll hear more about the concept of a conversation with data from us. In fact, turning spreadsheets into conversations is something we think can be a transformational way to think about your data.

So, after my son and I got home from running errands that day, we went to Google translate to figure out “How do you say Indigo in Japanese?”: http://translate.google.com/#auto|ja|indigo. This then led us to wonder when would a Japanese person talk about the color indigo or the Indigo plant?  By afternoon both of us walked away from the conversation feeling like we had learned a bunch, cherishing the time spent and looking forward to the next conversation.  After all, isn’t that what we hope to achieve with all our conversations: to feel that sense of reward that makes us anxiously await the next one?

Here’s to great data conversations!

Americans are a painfully conflicted people. We love our TV and movie violence but worry that it ruins our children’s minds. We want to reduce healthcare costs, but don’t want to restrict the free market. We love Justin Bieber, but hate ourselves for loving a Canadian.

Conflicts like these leave little room for a satisfactory answer. Basic principles are in conflict and deeply-rooted desires run up against painful consequences. We don’t want to choose, and the middle ground feels like failure.

The people who practice data analysis and visualization have their own set of immutable conflicts. Do any of these sound familiar?

“My boss wants pie charts, 3D, and lots of bright colors, but…
I know that stuff is a distraction from the message of the data.”

“I love geographic maps and network diagrams, but…
it is hard to see patterns or find insights from these types of visualizations.”

In a sense, each of these conflicts represents an opportunity to innovate to solve a persistent problem in our data viz and analysis business. Find a way to satisfy the initial desire without suffering the assumed consequence, and you’ve got a chance to delight users of data.

It’s over. The people have spoken and their voice is loud and clear. Google Search is the champ. Google’s mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Now they can add a subtitle, “ha ha, iPhone”.

Google Search knocked out a who’s who in the Gadget space. Let’s look at how they got the win.

Round 1: The Flip camera (93-7)
Round 2: Kindle (85-15)
Round 3: iPod (81-19)
Round 4: GPS (55-45)
Semifinals: Amazon Store (71-29, where do we go to get all those gadgets)
Finals: iPhone (75-25)

Google Search’s closest matchup was against the surprisingly popular GPS, which is fitting since they both ensure you’re never lost.

Want to explore more? Check out our updated results tool and see how gender, age, and geekology affected each round.

Want a copy of the bracket for your wall? Grab one here.

We hope you enjoyed the tournament as much as we did. There are a few technologies, tools, and toys that we regret missing (Wifi, Dropbox) but maybe they’ll show up next year.

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!