Either the DATA is compelling, or it is not. Don’t blame yourself if the chart fails to “wow”.

If you feel you need to “convert” people in your office, why not buy one or more of Tufte’s very expensive prints and hang them up on your wall. They wowed most of us and got us interested in the subject, it should work on other sensible people.

Another potential approach is this: take a case where the correct result WILL BE OBSCURED by an ugly-#ss chart as above. Maybe some sales data that should be obvious or famous to someone in your firm. Then remove the labels, spin the chart around, and colour it so as to confuse them.

Say, “OK, which piece of the pie is [biggest client] ?” They guess wrong. You say, A-ha! and show them a flat, representative chart.

Who would ever suggest that presentation could make ALL the difference? That is an obvious straw man.

The Tukey attitude (e.g. stem plots) advocates for tabular data too.

Nobody said visual display has to be with colored bars, lines, or patches.

PS Just imagine a histogram with 5 observations. Is it better to put an axis on the left or a number over the top of each? I’d go with the latter. Colorize the important number.

I think we as BI specialists (be it a consultant or a regular employee) focusing on visualization information can do our share to design better dashboards, for example: using subdued colors when it makes sense, getting rid of fluff (and those wonderful animated charts Xcelsius offers as a default), etc.
Showing the customer how much more information can be displayed in the same space a gauge or pie chart occupies with a different visualization such as a ranked bar chart.
We should try to make better dashboards (which the customer sometimes confuses with detailed reports by the way), and true sometimes the customer will despite our efforts and arguments insist on a gauge or pie chart, so be it.

Not showing a customer better visualizations than a gauge for example is a disservice IMHO.
Sure there is eye-candy, but would you like cotton candy for breakfast… EVERY DAY?

Paraphrasing the infamous Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”

I must say I generally enjoy healthy debate about topics related to my profession, and for the most part I found this thread interesting and enjoyable. But I think it’s time to let it go. We’re now approaching a “You say po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to” type of discussion, whereas I think, in truth both parties share a great deal of common ground.

What is my take away from this? As professionals in the field of data visualization, it is our role to do the best job we can to present usable information to the data consumers, while also recognizing that the (nominally) ‘best’ method for doing so is not always going to be the one we’re told to use. Sound about right?

Our firm deploys BI solutions to smaller companies, and we’re often compelled to present information in a glitzy way, even though, from an informational perspective, there are other better options. But what we try to do is fulfill stakeholder expectations at the front-end of the project, and slowly migrate them to a more effective, albeit slightly less flashy presentation in rounds two and three. As they start to use the dashboards, they begin to realize that they can convey information better if they trim the fat from the visuals. But in truth, while we can educate and recommend, the ultimate decision lies with the information consumer.

Stephen, I definitely respect your views. I’m a long-time owner of your book, and often recommend it to my clients (no commission required ). But what I understand from Jorge’s comments is that sometimes you have to bend a bit to accommodate the consumer. And on that, I must agree with him.

Just like with email, it’s really easy to get sucked into reading between the lines of someones blog post. It’s a venue where inflection is impossible to interpret, and there’s no eye contact to help understand intent. That’s why I use so many smiley faces Might I humbly suggest that both parties are right in their own context, no gross misrepresentation of another’s work was intended, and we should all continue to strive for the best possible results for our stakeholders, accommodating their wishes to some degree even if we feel they are in error? Please?

That’s my 2 cents.

Regards,

Jim Payton

I only support some of the practices that you warn people against because I am told to do so by management. Same goes for the Xcelsius license we are about to buy. I’m the young new guy in the department and I can’t seem to persuade my own coworkers that it’s not the product we want/need, never mind the multiple layers of management above me.

This is partially the reason for my comment regarding the executives and gauges. Both the requirements AND the method of implementation is coming from the top of the organization. A mistake in my opinion, but unless I am the consultant hired to give advice, my word is meaningless. Jorge has written about these kinds of situations many times, and it is somewhat relevant to his talk of pie charts. Sometimes these poor practices are what’s required and it is beyond our control to do anything about it.

I apologize for assuming that you only work with the converted – I was not aware you taught such courses. However, outside the geographical areas you teach, who do you think would follow your work? I suppose a curious individual might come across your book or get pointed to your work from a blog like Jorge’s, but if that’s the case, they are already possibly questioning their current methodology and seeking out a better way of doing things.

As for the color in bullet charts, I still stand that red/yellow/green would be more intuitive than multiple hues of a single color. Personally, I don’t see why one would need any other colors on a dashboard. Use black and grey for data points and simply reserve color for a quick status indicator.

I think for the most part, all of us here are on the same side

You’re response to Jorge’s comments is an example of what I fear. You seem to believe that my charts are not simple and easy to read. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you were to sample my charts vs. Jorge’s, I believe you would find that on average, Jorge’s are more complex than mine. This is not a criticism of Jorge’s work. The fact is that, on average, more of Jorge’s examples address the needs of people with a greater level of charting sophistication than mine, so a greater level of complexity is appropriate. The goal is to keep data displays as simple as possible without oversimplifying them. Jorge and I both strive for this goal.

R. Bergfalk,

The tone of your comments suggests that you support some of the practices that I warn people against, or perhaps are committed to a product that I’ve disparaged.

My “long winded disputes” are attempt to correct misinformation. As someone who works hard to support data sensemaking and communication, I am a stickler for the truth.

Regarding my understanding of the “layman”, you are mistaken in your assumption that I only work with people who have chosen to attend my courses or read my books and are therefore already converted. Perhaps half of the people who attend my courses were sent to them by their managers. They represent the full spectrum of people who need to make sense of data and present it to others. They approach what I do freshly, without any prior commitment to or even knowledge of my work. Regardless of where they stand before taking the course, with rare exception they end the day with a clear understanding of the simple design practices that I teach and a desire to put them to work for themselves. Assuming, from your comment, that you work in a BI department, you might be interested in knowing that I worked in and managed BI departments for many years. Like you, I supported real people in real organizations in the real world. I still do, even though I now work as a consultant, writer, and teacher.

Your statement that the executives in your company want gauges on their dashboards is not an argument for their effectiveness. I’m well aware of their popularity. I’m also well aware of the popularity of cotton candy. Regarding bullet graphs, I actually don’t insist on having no color in them. What I advocate is that the background fill colors, which represent a sequential series of qualitative states such as good, satisfactory, and bad, consist of sequential intensities of a single hue, which need not be restricted to grayscale. Respect for those who are colorblind is not my only reason for advocating this. Another is the fact that if there are too many colors on a dashboard, the dashboard becomes visually overwhelming, and thus hard to look at, and you lose the ability to use color to attract attention to particular information, because the many colors that appear on the dashboard work perceptually as distractors.

Regarding your congratulations to Jorge for his success, I share your appreciation for Jorge’s work, except in those rare cases when he misrepresents my position, as he’s done here. The fact that I read and respond to his blog is not a measure of his success, however. I respond to almost any blog about data visualization when the content, in my opinion, is either exceptionally good, needs correction, or simply catches my interest. In an effort to remain in touch with everything related to data visualization, I use Google Alerts to search for and send me everything new that pops up on the Web about this topic.

Unfortunately Stephen, your long winded disputes of what you deem right in the world of visualization is turning me off to your work. As for what you consider a layman – if someone has sought you out and is attending your course, they have already been converted. While they may be a novice, they already have understood the big picture of data visualization and recognize you as a thought leader in the field.

I mention your name in my “BI” department at work, and the response I get is “who?”

Maybe a relevant example to wedge into this little debate is the lack of color in Bullet Graphs. You insist on having no color in them for the color blind but I think it severely inhibits the general report consumer to understand what it is the graph is telling them. (I’d like to see a test done on this – I dare you to do one and put it the results on your site!)

I work in a very large company and I just found out that the executives want a dashboard. Do you know what visualization they want front and center? Gauges!

Jorge – yes indeed congrats on your blog! Your work is such that Stephen Few is reading and feels compelled to discuss.

Just to say that I completely agree with you, and 90% with Sthepen. I like simpler, (very) easy to read charts, that shows trends quickly to managers.

In a bussiness environmet, a good chart must tell us a story, and it must do it quickly. If a chart don’t reveals information quicker than a data table, I better delete it and rather show the table.

A good chart, most of the times, don’t need impactfull colors to show a trend.

Congratulations for your blog.