People speak in metaphors all the time. For example, “we’re in the weeds” or we should “eat our own dog food”. Metaphors have even made it into technology with “desktops” and “windows”, though neither remotely reflect their real world counterparts (and probably shouldn’t). Some metaphors are used so often they slip past cliche and right into annoying. The media seems to love “the perfect storm” for any story that has two or more elements coming together at just the right time. However, in business, maybe the most overused metaphor is altitude. I’ve sat in business meetings many times where executives [...]
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Everybody wants their message to stand out. However, messages often get lost in the fog of competing information. In December, my friend and colleague, Ryan Coleman, did a great Ignite presentation on designing for visual efficiency called “Why is Waldo so !#@%ing Hard to Find”. As with all Ignite presenations, it’s fast (just about 5 minutes) and filled with information. He does a great job of explaining how the brain processes what it sees and what that implies for designing your message. Take a look: Ignite Toronto 2: Ryan Coleman – Designing for visual efficiency from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo. You can [...] How often do you get data that needs to be charted or graphed only to find out some of the data’s missing? We see it all the time. However, just because it’s missing, doesn’t mean you can ignore it. You need to know how to make it consistent, how to deal with it if it is missing, or sometimes even how to recover it. In this 9:12 video, the fourth in our series on well-formed data for charts & graphs, we cover: types of missing data Let [...] Our lives are made up almost exclusively of relationships and that includes data. In fact, it’s hard to think of examples of data that doesn’t involve a relationship. Customers (hopefully) have many Orders. Companies have multiple employees. People (hopefully) have multiple friends, who also have multiple friends, and may even share some of each others friends. People may have multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and so on. Admittedly, this may be the geekiest of topics on creating well-formed data. In part 3 of our 4 part series, we discuss one way to make sure your data follows the ”1 Concept per Row” [...] Continuing our series on preparing data for analysis & visualization, we’ve just released the next video on concatenation and extraction. The ability to break data apart and put it back together in new ways is essential to preparing data. By storing data at the lowest sensible level, it can be used separately or combined with other data for interesting analysis and visualization. In this practical video, we discuss 6 key Excel functions for extraction including left(), mid(), right(), search(), len(), and trunc(). Check out this 9:57 video to learn how to take the next step in preparing your data for analysis [...] Data visualization and analysis are powerful tools for discovering and communicating stories held in your data. However, before most of today’s data visualization tools can be used effectively, the data must be cleaned, organized and prepared. Over the next 4 videos, I’ll be discussing how to prepare your data to be visualized. The first step in the process is consistency. Consistency is made up of 4 principles: One Concept per Row Check out this 9:43 video to begin the most important step in preparing your data: In the next 3 videos, we’ll continue the discussion [...] Does this stuff really work? Ask that question to people in the visualization space and you’ll likely get a lot of great stories about an event or meeting or personal encounter where one visualization approach or another radically improved an outcome. That’s great, but where’s the solid research? Over the last 6 months I’ve gone on an exhaustive search beyond the anecdote for any research related to visualization. I’ve talked to industry experts and professors, searched databases, and read thousands of pages of academic research. One of the most prolific and interesting researchers of our day is Martin Eppler, researcher and [...] Some people would definitely think the process of creating a visual is some form of magic requiring some ability to conjure something from nothing. The myth of left brain/right brain reinforces the false notion that creativity is something that only belongs to a special, magical few. The reality is that, like magic, there is a science to visualization, that it can be learned, it requires practice, and anyone can do it! Last week, I attended the presentation of Jamy Ian Swiss, magician extraordinaire, at the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitor Series at the University of Michigan‘s School of Art & Design. Followers of visual [...] What do you do? I love getting that question, but it’s often just as interesting to hear others describe what it is they think I do. Some people think it’s about helping people speak to large groups or designing presentations. Some think it’s about the news graphics and charts that can be found in USA Today or Newsweek. Some think it’s about sketching or brainstorming new ideas. In some ways, it is pieces of all of those things and much more. Of course, the visual thinkers get it right away. They have experienced the power of using visualization for many applications. [...] Tom Crawford Hi everybody, and welcome to the new Visualization Workshops site and blog. My hope with this blog is to cover all things related to improving your ability to solve problems and sell ideas with pictures. (Thanks to Dan Roam for the great way of breaking it down). I’ll cover tools, techniques, research, great examples, experts/gurus, leading vendors, industry news, and much more. Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Let me know if there’s something you’d like to see or if you have items to share. –tom |
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