Rave Reviews: How to Dazzle Decision-Makers with Data

The Briefing Room

Rave Reviews – How to Dazzle Decision-Makers with Data

Twitter Tag: #briefr

The Briefing Room

Welcome

Host: Eric Kavanagh

[email protected]


The Briefing Room

!   Reveal the essential characteristics of enterprise software, good and bad

!   Provide a forum for detailed analysis of today’s innovative technologies

!   Give vendors a chance to explain their product to savvy analysts

!   Allow audience members to pose serious questions... and get answers!

Mission


The Briefing Room

Topics

November: DATA DISCOVERY & VISUALIZATION

December: INNOVATORS


The Briefing Room

Data Visualization

Learning is more effec.ve when it is an ac.ve rather than a passive process.

“~Euripides


The Briefing Room

Analyst: Robin Bloor

Robin Bloor is Chief Analyst at The Bloor Group

[email protected]


The Briefing Room

IBM

!   IBM Business Analytics offers a wide range of business intelligence, analytics and performance management solutions

!   Many Eyes, powered by the IBM Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE), is a web community that helps users create advanced visualizations from public data sets

!   Visualizations can be shared and embedded


The Briefing Room

Guest: Noah Iliinski

Noah Iliinski, Visualization Expert

at IBM

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Extensible Visualization & Four Pillars of Visualization

Noah Iliinsky

Center for Advanced Visualization, IBM

@noahi


About the Speaker

§  Noah Iliinsky §  Center for Advanced Visualization, IBM §  Noah Iliinsky is the author of Designing

Data Visualizations and the technical editor of, and a contributor to, Beautiful Visualizations, both published by O’Reilly Media.

§  He has spent the last several years researching effective approaches to creating diagrams and data visualization.

§  He has a master’s in Technical Communication from the University of Washington, and a bachelor’s in Physics from Reed College


Why Visualization?

© 2013 IBM Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

Why visualization?

© 2013 IBM Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

Visualization makes data accessible.

© 2013 IBM Corporation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Visualization allows access to huge amounts of data.


Why extensible visualization?


The old way…

The new way…

Visualization Description

Analytics & Visualization

Engine

Fixed Charting Library

Analytics & RAVE Visualization

Engine

Extensible Charting Library

Visualization Extensibility - Concept


l  Unleashes business users from a static library of charts

l  Quick and simple download of visualizations from new AnalyticsZone.com into reports for -  Cognos Business Intelligence V10.2.1 -  Cognos Express

l  Active reports with animated charts and

additional chart interactivity also available on Mobile iPad, enabling the rich discovery of insights from anywhere

Integrate extensible visualizations into Cognos reports


New visualizations are a simple download away

18

Browse and download from over 30 visualizations from the extensible visualization community.

l  Scatter l  Gantt l  Area l  Radar l  Boxplot l  Dial l  Treemap/Heatmap l  Plus a continually growing set of

visualizations

analyticszone.com/visualization

NEW! Visualization Marketplace


The Upside of Flexibility


When are visualizations successful?

20


1.  purpose – why this visualization 2.  content – what to visualize 3.  structure – how to visualize it 4.  formatting – everything else

A Successful Visualization

© 2013 IBM Corporation http://www.apple.com

Purpose > Content > Structure > Formatting

• Why am I creating this visualization?

• Who is it for?

• What do they need to understand?

• What actions do you need to enable?

• How will it be consumed?


Purpose dictates the deliverable. Different destinations require different maps.

http://maps.google.com


© 2013 IBM Corporation http://many-eyes.com/manyeyes/page/Visualization_Options.html



• What data matters? • What relationships matter? • Informed by purpose! • What’s excluded is as important as what’s included.




http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html



http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html

© 2013 IBM Corporation http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-bigger-than-microsoft-2012-2



• How do we best reveal the most important data and relationships?

• Choose meaningful layout and axes! • Use both axes! (Both, not three…) • Informed by purpose and content!


© 2013 IBM Corporation http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/post/33308788744/from-the-boston-metro-oct-10th-hannabeth-well

Structure fail.


© 2013 IBM Corporation http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/post/33308788744/from-the-boston-metro-oct-10th-hannabeth-well

Structure fixed.


© 2013 IBM Corporation http://many-eyes.com/manyeyes/page/Visualization_Options.html



• How should it look and feel? • How will it be consumed? • Makes data and relationships accessible.

• Makes importance visible. • Informed by purpose, content, and structure!



Formatting

Structure

Content

Purpose

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pound_layer_cake.jpg


© 2013 IBM Corporation http://ComplexDiagrams.com/properties



Creating effective visualizations Choosing the right visual properties Learn how to properly choose the visual property (position, shape, size, color and others) to encode the different types of data that will be presented in a visualization.

Download your copy http://bit.ly/successfulvis


• Is the purpose well-defined? • Does the content support the purpose?

• Does the structure reveal the content? • Does the formatting facilitate consumption?

• Iterate, iterate, iterate…

Checklist


IBM Many Eyes: Learn and Create •  Learn visualization best practices, insights and futures

from IBM visualization luminaries

•  Create a visualization in three steps

•  ibm.com/manyeyes

Follow IBM visualization luminaries •  @manyeyes

•  @noahi

Engage IBM Visualization Luminaries



The Briefing Room

Perceptions & Questions

Analyst: Robin Bloor

Minard’s Visualization

Dimensions: Advance/retreat (color), geographical location, number of men, temperature, distance & time

Tables and Dimensions

The problems with“unvisualized” data:

u  Every column in a table is a dimension

u  Time is a critical dimension

u  Some dimensions have high variability (say 00.00 to 1,000,000.00), others low variability (male/female), others are descriptors or UIDs

u  A table is possibly the worst way to represent data helpfully – although you can do things with a table (counts, averages, etc.)

u  It’s a very good way to store data

Information Service

There are many reasons why data may be provided to people:

u  To inform or alert them

u  To motivate them

u  To entertain them

u  To assist them (assist decisions)

u  To empower them (or evaluate them?)

u  To educate them (or help them self-educate)

THE CONTEXT DETERMINES THE INFORMATION SERVICE AND ITS CHARACTER

Consumers & Explorers

SPECIFIC USER

TYPES:

Needs to be informed and/or enabled in an easily digested manner

THE CONSUMER

Needs to be provided with: • an exploratory

capability • a versatile set of tools • a versatile set of

visualizations •  training/education

THE EXPLORER

Two Distinct Modes

There are two distinct modes of information usage:

u  REAL-TIME/BUSINESS-TIME: Information is a contributor to another activity

u  CONTEMPLATIVE ANALYSIS: •  Information is a material to work with and

analyze •  Visualization contributes to this analysis •  Just as there are statistical algorithms, there

are visual algorithms

NOTE THAT ANIMATION ADDS A DIMENSION. WE CAN SEE THINGS VIA ANIMATION THAT WOULD

OTHERWISE BE INVISIBLE.

The Burning Question

WHICH data visualizations are the most effective

for WHAT?

u  What does IBM know about the effectiveness of any specific visualization and how do we know it? How is it measured?

u  Is there a relationship between visualization and data volumes? If so, what is it?

u  Are some people poor at deriving meaning from visualization – and yet skilled in other ways?

u  What is the learning dimension and how is it characterized?

u  What does IBM know about animation and cognition, if anything?

u  You suggest that there are best practices. How do we know – what research has been done? Are there cultural variances?

u  Are there visualizations that are yet to be discovered?


The Briefing Room


The Briefing Room

Upcoming Topics

www.insideanalysis.com

November: DATA DISCOVERY & VISUALIZATION

December: INNOVATORS

2014 Editorial Calendar coming soon!


The Briefing Room

Thank You for Your

Attention

Image credits: bloomua / 123RF Stock Photo and ra2studio / 123RF Stock Photo

Technology

Rave Reviews: How to Dazzle Decision-Makers with Data