Juice Analytics

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!

Spring is a great time to spruce things up.  While you’re at it, consider adding a little shine to you and your skills.

We’ve made it easy for you by adding five more videos to our resources page that will help sharpen your saw, as Stephen Covey might say, in this important area of your life.  From graphing to table design, color to typography best practices, you’ll find these video tutorials full of tips, tricks and tidbits that you’ll be using long after the pollen rinses away and your antihistamine goes back in the drawer.

And, just in case you’ve been fogged over, we launched a new page on our site a few weeks ago, Design Principles. If designing from the human perspective interests you, you’ll find this a valued extension to your knowledgebase.  

Achoo! (That is, here’s to you!)

We’ve picked the best technologies of the Internet Era. It’s up to you to determine a champion. Pick the winner 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

Here’s the bracket (in a pre-internet-super-rad-3D style):

(click to get a printable hi-res 16-bit version)

You can vote for your favorites here: Technology Bracketology Round 1. Please share this with your friends and follow along at home!

There are four regions (Nerd, Dweeb, Geek, and Dork). Voting for the first round games takes place through 12 midnight Eastern Standard Time, Sunday, March 18th. Round 2 games will take place on March 18-20th.

We’ll report the results here and provide the round 2 bracket on Monday.

If you think we’ve missed a tech, make your own NIT tournament. Now, fight!

[Insert witty opening here].

You see? In principle, when writing a blog post, I know it draws you (the reader) in to continue reading by starting with a story or something smart or a joke. Don’t overwhelm people right from the get-go. Start with metaphor or phrase that relates to the article.

That introduction relates to what I’m really interested in talking about: principles. We’re launching an exciting new resource today, and it has to do with principles, design principles that is. These resource will remind you to do things like use gradients appropriately or provide instruction. Their goal is to direct your design towards information presentation that focuses on the human element.

Engineers start with technology. MBAs start with funding. Designers start with people. The trick is to get interdisciplinary teams to raise their collective I.Q. by working in the overlap of those three areas. That’s where innovation flourishes.Moggridge

At Juice, we start with people and great consideration for that overlap. Therefore, we’re not only about what information to show but also how to show it. And behind those two basic ideas is an awful lot of thinking > developing > learning > and iteration. Through that process we’ve gathered a (rather long) list of principles that inform our decisions, and we hope it can help you with yours too. Rather than trying to be sure your application supports all principles, approach it more like a stack of flash cards and pull out the relevant ones. With experience, you’ll realize you’re doing these things naturally and understanding the drivers of design thinking is invaluable to introduce objectivity into application design.

There are two parts to this:

1. View the list and explore the content on our Design Principles page.
2. Engage in discussion on our Quora Design Principles Board.

This list will likely grow and shrink over time through the refinement process. The descriptions of each principle definitely will. Our goal is not to be exhaustive, but helpful.

There is a slight catch. So far, we’ve only fully a few of the many principles, which means we have a long way to go. We’re going to embrace process on this one with what might appear to be a (very intentional) turtle’s pace. Still, we’ve made the titles as concretely informative as we could before filling out all their content. Feel free to to run (err walk) right along side us or check in every now and then to evaluate your projects against the list. If you find these helpful or would like to share your experience or opinion on any of them we invite you to engage in the discussion, vote up and down the principles you find more or less useful. Share your insights why. Let us know which one you’d like to see next. Keep us honest, and the visualization community successful. Happy designing.

How do you find the best of the best? The National Football League holds a combine every year where the top college football players run, jump and press. We took that data and put it into our leaderboard visualization to let you explore these physical freaks.

A leaderboard lets you focus on exceptions; the best and worst performers across different characteristics. Everyone or everything that’s not superlative (or lousy) is available but not emphasized.

By looking across multiple characteristics you can see one person’s strengths and weaknesses. Here’s a quick overview of how it works.

Or jump in and try it out with your own data. One note: this visualization requires IE 9 or higher or Safari/Chrome/Firefox.

We’re working on a revamp of the popular chart chooser that would include more tools like this so let us know what you think.

There is a funny list of awkward analogies by high school students that circles the Internet like a shark around a downed airman. There were some great ones in the list:

• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

A good analogy is priceless–it helps us understand the new by connecting it to the familiar. A bad analogy is like an empty tin can at the bottom of a well, it isn’t good to drink from.

Good data visualizations are like storytelling. Where does this analogy lie?

For practitioners of the craft, connecting our work to stories feels satisfying — it is a call to raise our standards and an opportunity to enhance the influence of our field. Stories evoke images of rapt audiences, dramatic arcs, and unexpected plot twists.

Unfortunately this analogy is a stretch. The truth is that many of the core elements of stories simply aren’t evident in data visualizations: characters, a plot, a three-act structure, a beginning and an end. Occasionally, the narrative flow of a story can be glimpsed in an infographic or dashboard.

At the same time, data visualizations have fundamental characteristics missing from traditional storytelling. Interactive data visualizations let the audience explore the information to find the insights that resonate with them. Visualizations should take shape based to a large extend on the underlying data. And as this data changes, the emphasis and message of the visualization is likely to change.

To be fair they aren’t entirely unrelated. One element that the two forms of communication share is the ability to build and resolve tension. Pose a problem, then deliver an insight that helps answer that problem.

Nevertheless, our community breezily equates visualization with storytelling. I was struck by the language used in Visual.ly’s recent post called From Data to Story: Dissecting a Well-Made Visualization. The author reviews a good visualization and discusses how it tells a simple story:

“This piece is particularly interesting because it tells a very simple story, yet the data itself is complex. Imagine the myriad ways that one could show the aggregated percent change for twenty different companies. The author of this visualization experimented with different views and arrived on the two that told the story most completely, most effortlessly.”

Ad Age’s Garrick Schmitt boldly states that “all of this data visualization is, of course, really just a new way to tell stories (or create experiences).”

We want to link our newest communication method to our oldest. The shoe doesn’t fit.

Ultimately, communicating with data isn’t about telling a specific story, but rather starting a guided conversation. It is more a Choose Your Own Adventure book, the color commentary of a basketball game, or the narrative structure of Call of Duty 3. It is more dialogue with the viewer’s understanding than monologue, and must be more influenced by the content than the unfettered creation of a storyteller.

If you’re in or around Nashville and hear an unfamiliar voice break out in song, it might just be one of our Juicers inspired by a trip through Music City.

We’ll be in Nashville, Tennessee on March 1 and 2, 2012, and we would enjoy catching up with you while we’re there. There’s a lot to discuss, from industry news to the latest here at Juice, and we look forward to hearing about what’s going on in your corner of the data viz world.

If you’ll be in the Nashville area and would like to connect with us, leave us a comment or send an email to info@juiceanalytics.com.

(And, if you can carry a tune, all the better.)

Clear bright white and nostalgic colored string lights adorn otherwise commonplace trees and shrubbery on nearly every block this time of year. Neighborhoods and shopping centers look like beautiful storybook villages as we pass, enjoying our commutes a little bit more in spite of the holiday traffic.

On my drive home last night, the thought occurred to me that data is a lot like holiday lights. When organized in an attractive and appealing dashboard design, the power of data is enhanced and can be even more powerful and meaningful. Data, when displayed in a striking new way can be more intriguing to us, and as a result, we’re more likely to engage with it. Perhaps we would have missed the very same data had it been organized and presented in a less pleasing fashion.

By presenting data in a way in which our psyche is predisposed to receive it, we allow our audience to see and hear the story that we have to share, and then help them gain clarity and understanding around the data. It is then that we have their attention and the opportunity to make a point, deliver a pitch, close a sale or ask them to make a decision.

Sharing information in a context in which people are open and most receptive to receiving it is intuitive. It’s human nature to appreciate attractive things, especially pretty lights, to give and receive beautifully and thoughtfully wrapped packages and to look forward to the promise of a brand new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Juice Team!

Tis the season of indulgence. Sometimes it is indulgence without any semblance of restraint. Case in point, the “Cherpumple” — a combination pumpkin, apple, and cherry pie framed in icing.

When it comes to business dashboards, the gauge chart is often a case of indulgence without restraint. It can be equal parts waste of valuable pixels, low information, and visually deceptive. It would be a lot smarter to use a bullet chart — but who wants to pick the the fruit plate for desert?

Gauges have undeniable appeal to dashboard designers everywhere. Perhaps it is the “skeuomorphism” of a gauge chart. That is, it borrows from the look of something we are familiar with as a way to make us feel comfortable or understand its purpose.

In the past, I’ve fought the good fight against these charts. Now I’m resigned to the fact that eradication is impossible. If that’s true, can we at least find some ways to make them better through design? Tone down the brilliant sheen and high-contrast colors; turn up the information conveyed.

First we can start by making them look better. Web designer Christian Annyas shared a beautiful gallery of Chevrolet speedometer designs across the years. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Christian even offers a decent argument for gauges over simply showing a value:

“It’s easy for a driver to get used to a needle that rises and passes numbers that are located on fixed positions. A quick glance is all it takes to see and understand the value it represents.”

Let’s take one of those designs, overlay a few necessary data elements, and see if we can create something worth looking at.

1. Start with an classy Chevrolet design that lays out so as not to take up too much valuable vertical space
2. Add subtle indicator of good and bad zones with green and red dots
3. Show the current value with a bold label
4. Display distribution of recent history to communicate how the value has changed

While this chart is still far from efficient in its data-to-ink ratio, at least it communicates the small amount of information effectively. Any ideas for how to make it better?

Using proper dashboard design techniques is a topic that struck a chord when we released our white paper series
“A Guide to Creating Dashboards People Love to Use” a few years ago, and still seems to resonate as people regularly download the content from the Juice Analytics website, and we receive ongoing requests to speak around these key principles.

Since we can all use a little calibration every once in a while to stay in tune, we thought we’d post it again, with a reminder that you can access this oldie but goody, along with other materials on the Juice Analytics resources page anytime — and that all of these materials are available to you gratis.

Should you have a friend, colleague or know someone who could benefit from a little dashboard design “religion”, feel free to let them know where you found yours.