Friday, January 25, 2013

Vizualize

Qliktech put out a technical brief on visualizations that is a pretty good read. But like everything else, except for what I teach you, it has some things I disagree with. And because, let's face it. You gotta be a man to wear tights!


  • Some of the visualizations aren't available in Qlikview without running an extension. (Bullet charts, arrow charts)
  • Page 5 - Implies that a speedometer gauge shouldn't be used and that one of it's biggest flaws is that it doesn't show a trend. While I agree that it uses a lot of space for a little information, if used skillfully (and sparingly) it can give the business user a quick look into the 'health' of a particular metric.
  • Page 8 - Amen!
  • Page 9 - Take this advice on Mekko charts and apply it to all area-type charts. It is difficult, if not impossible to interpret the areas of differently shaped objects.
  • Page 10 - I agree that tables shouldn't be used on a dashboard, but we don't just build dashboards. m*Sight is also a reporting tool. Use tables as a backup to your visualization.
  • Page 13 - Values inside your bars is OK and an efficient use of space, if your users don't need the detail in the shorter segments. A good option is to use Fast Change to allow the user to quickly see a table.
  • Page 15 - 7 is too many segments for a pie chart. 
  • Page 15 - 'Others' in a pie chart should not drill down. The drill down will show proportions to the 'Others' group and not to the whole. 

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