I’m probably guilty of this as much,
if not more than anyone else:
Not
letting go of the Principles of Data Visualization.
I say this because I have studied
these principles inside and out. I have a tendency to read the words of Stephen
Few, Edward Tufte and several other experts as though they are written in
stone.
This is something I have to
consciously recognize and then quickly get over. Even Stephen Few will tell
you, the best dashboard is the one that is used.
The fact of the matter is, if we are
building a dashboard, we are probably building it for someone else. That
someone probably has less knowledge of data viz design and often has no desire
to understand data viz design. But in the end, we have to deliver something
that our client will adopt, use, understand and ultimately take action on. If
we don’t accomplish these things, our dashboard will not be a success, no
matter how good of job we did applying the principles!
So, if a client or manager or
director wants to see all good/bad data scenarios to be marked with green/yellow/red,
then that’s what we deliver. Do we know that statistically, approximately 10%
of the population may not be able to decipher between green and red? Yes! Then
why do we do it? Because it’s not a show-stopper and if it helps to increase
adoption, that’s a win.
With this said, you still don’t want
to create “3-D, Spinning, Flaming Pie Charts”. There are certain things like
chart selection that you will want to save your battles for.
And when you do get asked to build
that “3-D, Spinning, Flaming Pie Chart”, if your tool will actually build it,
go for it. But be sure to provide a better solution right beside it. Explain
the difference and hope that your client SEES the better way.
I chose to write about this in
response to a healthy debate I had based on the following tweet I posted:
While I stand by my comment and
believe that there are much better ways to display data than through a donut
chart...I am developing a dashboard now for an executive that will include a
series of donut charts with a % Value in the center.
#BendButDon’tBreak
Cheers!
Kevin Taylor
