Dashboard Design Advice: Avoid eye contact at all cost!!!
Dashboard Design
When I watch interviews with international sports stars, I sometimes have to laugh. Every inch of their clothing is plastered with logos from sponsors. It’s usually impossible to see or remember even a single one of them amidst this smorgasbord. We can spot a similar overload problem in many dashboards and reports. Corporate logos and stock photographs are injected to “enhance” the visual appearance of the objects. This is bad enough but some pictures are worse than others. Two weeks ago I saw an example of that. Several reports and dashboards featured photos of beautiful eyes. It was supposed to be a metaphor for business insight. Such a shame – it simply did not work.
Focal Point: Eyes
Decoration hardly ever motivates people to effectively consume information. On the contrary, photos and logos usually steals attention and waste valuable space. And human eyes are especially ill-suited as embellishment for reports or dashboards. Here is why: Eyes demand people’s attention (this is called visual weight) and they rank before anything else when we look at a photograph, a picture or a dashboard. Our eyes automatically gravitate towards that part. It’s like a magnet – eyes attract eye contact. And that pretty much explains why we should not include photos of eyes in our dashboards or reports. Take a look at the example below.
Notice how you keep jumping back to look at the eyes. This is a simple example, of course. Imagine if this was a full-screen dashboard. Your eyes would constantly flip back and forth between content and those blue eyes. Focus is lost. Plus there is the obvious question – why do we need to include the eyes here in the first place? They do not add any value whatsoever.
Let’s look at the better version.
Notice the difference? You are now able to focus on the chart. There is no distraction.
A lesson for report & dashboard design
Next time you design a report or dashboard, delete those logos and photos. Most of them do not add any value, anyway. The objective of proper report and dashboard design is to deliver information in the best possible way. Human eyes represent one of the biggest possible distractions. Images of eyes clearly have no space in report and dashboard design. Hence my advice for the day: Avoid eye contact at all cost!
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What my car taught me about designing a successful dashboard
A useful dashboard?
The other day, a former colleague sent me several screenshots of a ‘dashboarding solution’ a new team member had proposed to him. What I saw was wild: A set of complex, colorful and overloaded screens. Not just one screen, but a whole book of different pages. There were long tables mixed with colorful gauge charts. It took me a few minutes to understand what was happening. This was clearly not a dashboard but rather a poorly designed reporting application. A dashboard is meant to provide us with a quick overview of our most critical business information. It is not supposed to deliver us a 360 degree detailed view.
Unfortunately, too many dashboards are too complex these days. They fail to provide information at a glance. Overly complicated and saturated screens frustrate managers. To avoid project failure we should apply careful restraint during the dashboard design process. I have found that the dashboard in my car provides inspiration for that.
The car dashboard
Car dashboards are quite brilliant. They allow us to obtain critical information within a split of a second. How do they manage to do that? Here are some reasons why:
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Simple – How long does it take to understand the dashboard of a new car? The answer is: It takes a few seconds. The car dashboards are deceptively simple. You don’t need the manual to understand how it works.
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Compact – They are compact. There is a single screen. We don’t have to scroll through multiple screens to find out how fast we are going.
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Uncluttered – Most car dashboards are super clean and uncluttered. Colors are carefully selected. There aren’t any logos. Every object has a clear purpose. It would be hard to take anything away.
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Visual – Yes, they are visual. Visuals are easier to read than text. We do not find a table with our historical speed and RPM in the dashboard. Reading that would take too long and it would take the focus away from the road.
- Important- Only the most important information is displayed.Everything serves a clear and distinct purpose. It would be almost impossible to take anything away.
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Exceptions – Identifying problems is really simple – a red icon will immediately alert us. We don’t have to go digging for that critical information.
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Entry point – Modern cars allow us to drill-down whenever there is an exception. But that is truly optional. The dashboard simple acts as the entry point and not more than that.
Your management dashboards
Next time you design a performance dashboard, think about this list. A lot of those qualities should also apply to your reports. It is our job as business analytics professionals to make it easy for managers and knowledge workers to turn data into information. But to do that, we need to pay attention to the design process.
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An Easter Egg hunt with three charts
It’s that time of the year. Millions of kids are excited about hunting for Easter Eggs. Why not do the same here on the blog? Below are three charts. All of them are colored according to the season. But there are some problems with each one of the charts. Can spot them? Scroll down to see some comments….
Chart 1 – The Lollipop of Products
The Lollipop - Makes sense?
Chart 2 – The Pyramid of Deception
The Pyramid - Admired for its shape and power
Chart 3 – Walk that line
The trend is your friend? Or maybe not?
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Why stacked line charts are useful
Stacked line charts
Stacked line charts are a great and yet simple tool. Here is why. We often run into a situation where we need to analyze data with different units of measure. Think about a classic but yet simple situation: Vital company data such as revenue, margin % and expenses is used to obtain insights about the past and current performance . One could dismiss this as an easy task and simply review a standard table. But raw data is really tough to analyze. Detecting trends and patterns quickly is almost impossible. Especially with regular data sets that span multiple organizational units
Raw data is hard to analyze. Even simple data sets as this one here.
The other option would be to stick the data into a traditional line chart. But this won’t work in many cases for two obvious reasons:
- The units of measure are different (Revenue ($), Margin (%), Headcount (#), Volume (#), etc..)
- The units of measure have large differences (example: Revenue is measured in millions, travel cost in thousands)
Both cases result in a pretty much useless chart. You can see a fine example right below:
An almost useless chart - What are the margins again?
For data sets containing just two different units of measure, we could alternatively consider a dual axis graph. But I personally find them distracting and many casual users get confused. This is where stacked line charts come in handy.
The power of stacked line charts
Stacked line charts are basically a bunch of line charts that we stack. Why is that useful? Well, take a look:
A stacked line chart - A better option
The stacked line charts allows us to easily identify and compare the trends and patterns in our data. Using this stack is fairly easy. We just have to keep in mind that the units of measure or the scale is different in each one of the line charts. But that should be obvious.
Your analysis
Generating these stacked line charts is really easy with personal analytics tools like Cognos Insight. Spreadsheets typically required us to generate various different charts and to align them manually.
If you haven’t use them before, get started today! Stacked line charts are very powerful, yet easy to use.
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Watch that chart aspect ratio!
The chart aspect ratio
The other day I reviewed a dashboard. It looked great. But there was a chart on the bottom that just did not make any sense. It was way too long and stretched out. As a result, it was very difficult to use it appropriately. And that reminded me: We have to watch out for the chart aspect ratio.
The basic idea
Wikipedia defines the aspect ratio as follows: “The aspect ratio of an image describes the proportional relationship between its width and its height.” It’s as simple as that. We get confronted with the aspect ration when we purchase a TV or computer monitor or when we work with photographs. Does the aspect ratio matter? Oh, yeah it does! Take a look at the two photographs below. The first one uses the common HD 16:9 ratio. I cropped the second one down to a square format (1:1). Do you see the difference in the overall impression of the photo?
16:9 (HD) Aspect Ratio: Can you feel the wide and open ocean?
Square Aspect Ratio: Not that great. The boat has too much visual weight and the ocean does not seem vast and wide.
Your charts
The aspect ratio does matter for charts as well. We have to watch out for that when we create reports and dashboards or when we perform ad-hoc analysis. Not every chart aspect ratio works equally well. Take a look at the two examples below. Both of these charts have problems:
It is difficult to make sense of the data. It is too flat.
The peaks are very pronounced.
The first chart is definitely too flat – it is very difficult to analyze it. The second one is probably a bit too dense. The peaks are extremely pronounced and it would be easy to come to wrong conclusions.
A better approach
What is the idea aspect ratio then? Hard to say. It is typically a good idea to use a ratio that is wider than it is tall (2:1 or something like that). But it depends on what you want to show. From my point of view, it makes sense to experiment a little bit. I have noticed that some visualization experts have issues advice but I have found it to be very academic and hard to implement. To stick with the example from above, I did re-size the graph a bit and finally settled on this chart aspect ratio:
This aspect ratio seems to work best for this data
Your dashboards & reports
Pay attention to the chart aspect ratio. Only because there is some space left in a dashboard does not mean we can or should stick a certain graph in there. The chart aspect ratio does matter quite a bit as we have just seen in these simple examples. Also, try experimenting with different chart aspect ratios when you perform analysis. Resizing charts with personal analytics tools such as Cognos Insight is really simple.
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Business Analytics news for the week
Business Analytics news
This has been an extremely busy but exciting week. It seems like the whole world is full of energy. Here are a few things you might want to be aware of.
CFO.com Webinar Forecasting
If you are interested in forecasting, make sure to register for the upcoming CFO.com webinar ‘Forecasting in turbulent times‘. Together with Tom Willman (Principle, The Hackett Group), I will discuss trends and best practices for improving your forecasting processes. The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, March 15th.
Cognos Insight & TM1 10.1 launch
Yesterday was the official launch event for Cognos Insight and TM1 10.1. I was blown away by how many people participated. As a track host, I was especially excited to see so many questions coming through. In case you missed it, you can still watch most of the sessions on demand. I highly recommend the keynote. Robby Meyers from DirecTV gave a fantastic demo of Cognos Insight. Make sure to watch that one. It’s great to see how a successful company like DirecTV leverages Cognos Insight.
Analyticszone.com
There is a great new website and community entirely dedicated to Cognos Insight. Make sure to check it out. The new site provides you with a bunch of great stuff: sample Insight models, tutorials, discussion forums etc.. You can also download a revised version of the famous IBM Cognos Blueprints. Yes, they have been redesigned to work in Cognos Insight. Make sure to also upload your files and share your experiences!
Updated iPad app
There is an updated version of the Cognos iPad app. You can downloaded it directly from the iTunes store. The latest version has a slightly different look and feel. It also feels snappier. There are also a bunch of other enhancements under the hood. And there is also additional demo content in there. The upgrade takes about a minute. And….can you imagine how awesome all your Cognos report will look on the new resolutionary iPad?
Harriet & Christoph – the story continues
Want to see me as a bobble head? Some of you may have watched the Cognos Insight demo at the IBM BA Forum in October 2011. My colleague Harriet Fryman and I demonstrated how the business and IT can get along using Cognos Insight. Our creative team took that story and has created a series of hilarious bobble head movies. The latest edition was released last night. In the prior video, Harriet put Sleep-eeze into my coffee. Time to get even! The other parts are also available on You Tube.
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Cognos Insight is here! A first look.
Cognos Insight & Personal Analytics
Exciting news! The latest member of the IBM Cognos family of business analytics solutions IBM Cognos Insight is here. This solution will provide business users with analytical freedom while allowing IT to maintain proper control. Some of you have might have already seen a demo. The purpose of this post is to give you a really quick overview of Cognos Insight. Please keep in mind, though, that this post won’t cover all the exciting things you can do with this new solution. Check back for follow-up posts later this month.
Cognos Insight sits on the desktop
Cognos Insight is a desktop tool that allows you to do a lot of things: data exploration, analysis, what-if scenarios, planning, forecasting, dashboarding, prototyping, etc.. You download it and install it on your Windows machine. Having the software on your desktop provides you with the advantage of being able to work in a disconnected and connected mode while leveraging the full power of your machine. Speaking of power and speed - Cognos Insight runs in-memory. The product is based on the highly successful IBM Cognos TM1 engine. When you first open it up, you will see the desktop that invites you to create a new workspace or to open up existing applications.
Read more 
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Freedom to think?
Change that viewpoint
Last summer I participated in a Bavarian wedding.
As a photographer I was really excited to see three traditional alphorn players. The early results looked good on the camera monitor (left photo). At that point I was tempted to pack up and celebrate with my friends. But I resisted and began to experiment with different viewpoints. The final shot ended up as my personal favorite (photograph on the right). Same scene, different perspective. Changing viewpoints paid off.
Business Analytics and Viewpoints
Changing our viewpoint is especially critical for Business Analytics. Read more
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Visualize This! A book review
Visualize this!
Visualization of data is one of the hottest topics these days. No matter where I go, people are taking a huge interest in it. Infographics are floating the Internet, for example. Companies are looking to refine their dashboards with better visuals. This was also apparent at the Gartner BI Summit earlier this week.
Despite the tremendous attention, there are only a few good books about this topic in the market. One of them is Nathan Yau’s title Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics
Great concepts
Yau does a fine job with engaging the reader in the first part of the book. He explains a number of important fundamentals of visualization. This includes a process that he suggests people should follow:
- Get your data
- Ask a question (what do you want to know about it?)
- Choose your visualization tools
- Explore the data (look for trends, patterns, differences, etc.)
- Tell the story and design the visual
There is a lot of relevant information for business analytics professionals in this section. I particularly like that Yau urges his readers to clearly figure out what story they want to tell by visualizing data. This is often forgotten in the design of a dashboard (e.g. do I use a line-chart to show the trend, or do I use a bar chart to show the variances?)
“Approach visualization as if you were telling a story. What kind of story are you trying to tell? Is it a report, or is it a novel? Do you want to convince people that action is necessary?” Nathan Yau
The other chapters
The remaining chapters of the book contain valuable content as well. The author covers topics such as handling data and picking tools for building charts. Several chapters are dedicated towards describing how to best visualize certain problems (e.g. patterns, proportions, spatial relationships, etc.). Each section provides plenty of examples and some good ideas. I enjoyed working through this. But I do have to say that the content isn’t nearly as deep as let’s say Stephen Few’s material.
A good book for BI professionals?
So far so good. There is just one thing that you should know: Many chapters are also full of technical instructions that teach you how to build graphs and charts in the open source package R along with Adobe Illustrator. There is a lot of code in the book. Technical folks might enjoy this. But it is not my cup of tea and most BI professionals will hopefully build their charts using the corporate BI platform. To be honest, I went ahead and skipped those pages.
Visualize this!
Nathan Yau’s book Visualize this! is definitely a good book. I learned a few things here and there and took ample notes. It is also entertaining. However, one has to understand that this is not necessarily a book dedicated towards BI professionals. Rather, this is a book for people who are looking to build infographics and other standalone visualizations. Nevertheless, you can tell that Nathan Yau is passionate about it and he inspired me to hone my skills. If you are looking for a deeper and more business oriented read, I would rather recommend the books by Stephen Few and Edward Tufte.
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Stacked bar charts? Mixed feelings!
Stacked Bar Charts
Part-to-whole analysis is a common task in business. Let’s say we want to analyze how much different product groups contribute towards total revenue. Or we want to analyze our cost across different cost element groups. One way to do this visually is to leverage waterfall or pareto charts. Another popular option is to use stacked bar charts. Stacked bar charts are just a special type of bar chart. Instead of spreading the different categories out across the x or y axis, we stack them. But are they really useful? I have mixed feelings about them.
Single Stacked Bar Charts
Below is an example of a stacked bar chart. This provides an overview of the cost structure for a certain fiscal quarter. You can see that each stack in the chart represents a specific cost element group. The entire stack indicates the total cost.
Is this a good chart? Sort of. Notice how much effort is involved in reading the graph. Comparing the individual stacks requires effort (look at Commissions and Travel, for example). I also find it hard to read the specific values of each stack (how much was spent on advertising?). On the positive side, this chart allows me to quickly identify the total cost. And I obtain a somewhat solid overview of how the money was spent. However, most business analytics platforms like Cognos 10 allow you to hover over a chart section to see the individual values. That makes the stacked bar chart above somewhat more useful.
Another way to display this – and I prefer this option – is to use a regular bar chart. Take a look:
Notice that the comparison of the different cost categories is a lot easier. You can quickly read the individual values and the comparison between the cost elements is easy as well. But I am missing the total of my cost. We would either have to calculate that or include the information in a different manner. The stacked bar chart therefore does not really impress me in this type of setting.
Multiple Instances
So, should we toss those stacked bar charts then? Not necessarily. Take a look the next example. The analysis is now extended to the entire fiscal year. There are multiple instances of the stacked bar chart.
Notice how different this looks. You can quickly see that total cost have increased in the last quarter (after decreasing slightly). I am also able to see how the different cost elements have changed throughout the fiscal year (look at advertising, for example). The stacked bar chart is now much more useful. I personally like this. But what about the traditional bar chart in this situation? Let’s take a look:
The graph invites you to compare the cost composition quarter by quarter. The comparison between different quarters is also not difficult. The only problem with this version is that the overall cost are difficult to assess. Both versions have their strengths and weaknesses.
Stacked Bar Charts – Summary
Stacked bar charts are certainly not bad. But as the examples above show, they are stronger in a multi-instance setting. But even then, you need to be careful: stacked bar graphs tend to look strange when you have negative values (give it a try!). The single stack is not that strong as compared to the traditional bar chart. Both offer different insights. And let’s not forget about waterfall and pareto charts as well.
From an analysis point of view, I would probably want to switch between the different charts. IBM Cognos 10 provide users with the ability to change chart types on the fly. That makes the analysis of data very interactive.
Have you added stacked bar charts to your toolbox? If yes, make sure to use them in the right circumstances.
P.S.: I will take a look at stacked area charts in February.
