Comments on: Visualizing change with Stephen Few http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/ Effective Charts and Dashboards for Excel users Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:31:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Zach http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-84 Zach Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:40:07 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-84 Jorge, I agree that those Visifire animations are useless. They come in two flavors: 1) expand a bar/line then let it bounce around for a moment; 2) fly in the bars/lines from random parts. These types of animations are childish don't help in the least. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me from a Microsoft product (Silverlight...I'm assume those are defaults brought to us from Redmond). Jorge, I agree that those Visifire animations are useless. They come in two flavors: 1) expand a bar/line then let it bounce around for a moment; 2) fly in the bars/lines from random parts. These types of animations are childish don’t help in the least. On the other hand, it doesn’t surprise me from a Microsoft product (Silverlight…I’m assume those are defaults brought to us from Redmond).

]]> By: admin http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-83 admin Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:07:56 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-83 Micky, animation should help to understand the data. Those animations are basically the same we find in Powerpoint. Useless. Micky, animation should help to understand the data. Those animations are basically the same we find in Powerpoint. Useless.

]]> By: micky41 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-82 micky41 Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:12:14 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-82 hey Stephen,chk this out I bet this can help you for your animation Charts <a href="http://visifire.com" rel="nofollow">visifire</a> they have some cool and awesome animated charts and even more offered under open source just for free hey Stephen,chk this out I bet this can help you for your animation Charts visifire they have some cool and awesome animated charts and even more offered under open source just for free

]]> By: admin http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-81 admin Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:09:54 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-81 Steve Great to have you here! I decided not to look at the software before commenting your paper. After reading it again I still find it unbalanced. You take your time writing about change but you almost skip animation to talk about the "trails" feature. It's ok, it's a nice feature, but I wish you could share with us your valuable views on animation besides the short memory problem. I now have a better understanding of trails, after looking at the online demo (you should really use screencasts! I love them.), but I'll discuss them in a next post on "how to see Florida in an animated chart"... Steve
Great to have you here! I decided not to look at the software before commenting your paper. After reading it again I still find it unbalanced. You take your time writing about change but you almost skip animation to talk about the “trails” feature. It’s ok, it’s a nice feature, but I wish you could share with us your valuable views on animation besides the short memory problem.

I now have a better understanding of trails, after looking at the online demo (you should really use screencasts! I love them.), but I’ll discuss them in a next post on “how to see Florida in an animated chart”…

]]> By: Stephen Few http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-80 Stephen Few Sat, 29 Sep 2007 04:42:00 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/visualizing-change-with-stephen-few/#comment-80 Jorge, You have misinterpreted my article. As I stated in it, I find animations quite useful. The fact that I could not illustrate animation adequately using static images should not be read as disappointment in the feature. What I emphasized in the article, however, is the limitation of animation in that you cannot remember the path that a bubble or data point follows in any detail after the animation has finished. The primary point of the article was to feature the benefits of a "trail" to see the entire path at one time, thus overcoming the limits of short-term memory. Contrary to what you have said, it might very well matter whether we can or cannot see Florida moving around in the scatterplot over time. This is part of the pattern that might be quite important to the story. We might not need a static chart to plot a single data point, as you have pointed out, but we do need animation or a trail to see how the data point that represents Florida changed through time. If you know of another way to see this in a scatterplot, I would be interested in seeing it. Take care, Steve Jorge,

You have misinterpreted my article. As I stated in it, I find animations quite useful. The fact that I could not illustrate animation adequately using static images should not be read as disappointment in the feature. What I emphasized in the article, however, is the limitation of animation in that you cannot remember the path that a bubble or data point follows in any detail after the animation has finished. The primary point of the article was to feature the benefits of a “trail” to see the entire path at one time, thus overcoming the limits of short-term memory.

Contrary to what you have said, it might very well matter whether we can or cannot see Florida moving around in the scatterplot over time. This is part of the pattern that might be quite important to the story. We might not need a static chart to plot a single data point, as you have pointed out, but we do need animation or a trail to see how the data point that represents Florida changed through time. If you know of another way to see this in a scatterplot, I would be interested in seeing it.

Take care,

Steve

]]>