Viz-Fest Day 3 – Data Visualization and Dashboards #MRX #NewMR
Live note-taking from Viz-Fest, November 2016. Any errors are my own.
Tom Schlak, E-Tabs, Data Viz for the Visually Impaired
- Most important information visually displayed to achieve objectives and can be monitored at a glance, Charts, graphs, icons, mostly visual
- How can data visualization be made accessible to someone who is blind
- Viewing a musical score versus listening to a score, “seeing” a chart can’t be replicated
- What are the alternatives, Maybe use speech assistive technologies
- 5% of the world has some visual impairment, 11.5% for people over 50 years of age
- Good designs benefit everyone even fully sighted users
- Text and fonts – font size on screen nothing less than 12 to 16 points, Helvetica, Arial
- Font styles more complicated, must consider legibility and readability, legibility is individual characters, readability is overall appearance including spacing and formatting, good fonts have better spacing, less fancy script, less detailed, filled lettering, less heavy, less thin, less serif, Use display fonts carefully because they aren’t accessible
- Contrast – sometimes corporate colours are a problem but readability must come first, use an online tool like adobe color CC, let’s you choose colors that match your target color or complement, matters for typography too, forget white on yellow, yellow on red, grey on green
- Clean user experience – avoid cluttered dashboard, eliminate non-data pixels like background images and watermarks, large logos, etc, think about data-to-ink ratio, avoid dark gridlines or over-labeling, don’t fill up backgrounds just because you can, gradients of grey can be difficult to differentiate, use colors like red and green appropriately, only highlight what must be highlighted, flatten the design by removing shadows and 3D elements that make a flat image look shiny
- Eg Microsoft logo went from shiny colored circle to four simple boxes
- What about color deficiency, blindness – 8% of men and .5% of women have deficiencies, the worst forms can distinguish 20 hues but people without can see about 100 hues
- Avoid red green charts as this can hide the data
- Traffic light indicators are common, red green yellow, and should be used with caution, consider using shapes as well, arrows, checkmarks, faces, and maybe use them only for one state, just the positives or just the negatives
- Use cross hatching or fill patterns so you don’t rely just on color
- Use Colblinder online to test colors, light colors can lose their differentiation, text labels will help, try also ColorBrewer online
- Much of this applies to good design anyway
- Is it still beautiful is someone can’t see it? Communicate to everyone
Marta Blankenberger, redaviZ, Data Driven Infographics
- Infographic is visual representation of data to share information quickly and clearly
- Need to think about position, size, shape, color
- Icons help us understand and interpret information
- Combine a doughnut chart with an icon, or combine a bubble chart with a map behind it
- Masking – cover or uncover part of a chart but placing a shape in front of it, try that with charts, grey out a section or tone down the color of part of it
- Combine icons, put stars over circles to mask different areas
- Try using an arrow as the bars in a bar chart, just paste the image into the bar
- Try putting a grey bar behind the bars to represent the maximum of the bar
- Try using copied icons as the bar (e.g., 5 stars, 8 stars, 3 stars), you can use masking to turn 5 out of 10 into 5.3 out of 10
- Use conditional formatting of data labels, change the color/shape/size of labels if they are less than a specified value, or put checkmarks as the data point
Interesting Infographic: How top brands are using Twitter
Even though this infographic is out of date, having first been published in January 2014, the points it lays out are still relevant today. Jade Furubayashi from Simply Measured describes the Twitter practices of the top brands including how many times they tweet every day and how engagement is affected by the number of followers. But don’t misinterpret that correlation by buying yourself 100,000 followers. Paid followers won’t add to your engagement and they won’t love and adore your brand by sharing, tweeting, and retweeting. Only genuine brand love creates engagement.
Related articles
- Interesting infographic: How your brain sees a logo (lovestats.wordpress.com)
- Missing Data: Whose problem is it anyways? (web.peanutlabs.com)
- 13 tips for giving the worst presentation ever (lovestats.wordpress.com)
- How women should ask for a raise if they don’t want to follow Microsoft’s CEO advice of Trust Karma (lovestats.wordpress.com)
Interesting Infographic: Smile! Your selfie is an ad
I came across this interesting infographic on the e-strategy trends site. It made me think about the types of selfies that I take. Most are at conferences with other attendees and I rarely have a product in hand. But, our clothes are visible, our smiles are visible, and someone’s logo is likely to be in the background whether it’s a vendor’s logo or the conference’s logo. Social listening researchers have been waiting for a tool like this for a long time and it looks like we’re finally inching forward just a little bit quicker now.
Related articles
- What’s Gonna Kill You? An Infographic That Actually Works #MRX (lovestats.wordpress.com)
- In Honor of Infographics. #MRX (lovestats.wordpress.com)
- Frame this Gorgeous Mercedes Benz ad on your living room wall #MRX (lovestats.wordpress.com)
Interesting infographic: How your brain sees a logo
Rob Marsh, the author of Logomaker, put together this infographic based on research results he found in a number of journals. I found the progression from vague shapes to shape descriptions to brand names and finally to value propositions quite interesting. Does your brand’s logo trigger this response in 400 milliseconds?
Related articles
- In Honor of Infographics. #MRX (lovestats.wordpress.com)
- What’s Gonna Kill You? An Infographic That Actually Works #MRX (lovestats.wordpress.com)
Every minute, every day, here is what happens on the internet… #MRX
We’re always ready for an update so here is one courtesy of Attention and Domo. The next time you’re conducting some social media research, think about the brand you’re researching. With all these sources at our fingertips, why do some brands receive so little attention and others so much. What can YOU do to make your brand relevant in all of these channels?
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- The Lowly Forgotten Neutral Score #MRX (lovestats.wordpress.com)
The Statistics of Easter Peeps in Infographic Form
Happy Easter!
May you enjoy an abundance of sugar and statistics on this wonderful Easter day.
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Related Articles
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What’s Gonna Kill You? An Infographic That Actually Works #MRX
We all love to buy lottery tickets and dream about how we’re going to spend our million dollar jackpot, even though our chance of winning is one in millions. And we don’t realize that our chances of winning a prize for completing a survey are often as good as 1 in 500 (that’s a survey plug!). It’s hard to visualize what those numbers mean. You really need a solid infographic to get a feel for it.
And, with all the infographic bashing I’ve been doing lately, perhaps it’s about time I share one that I think is actually good. The reason I like this one is that the visuals are essential for helping the reader understand the information being shared. They aren’t just pretty pictures that duplicate the text. There’s no need to try to imagine what millions or thousands mean. It’s right before your eyes.
Here’s what’s gonna kill you.
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Venn Diagram of Deep Fried, On a Stick, Sweets I Ate
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Pie Charts – Our Evil Friend
An Acceptable Use of Pie Charts: Van Gogh Color Distributions #MRX
Check Out the Statistical Outlier on my LinkedIn Cluster Analysis
In Honor of Infographics. #MRX
Infographics have become a staple of the internet. Every self-respecting journalist, artist, and blogger is desperate to discover and display a unique and stunning infographic on their own website. And, in honour of the great and powerful infographc, I too have jumped on the bandwagon. I have created this stunning infographic of infographics. Please enjoy and share with all of your friends and infographic specialists.