Information Visualization
What does your information look like?
That’s a strange question. What does information look like?
To most of us, business information is a list of numbers.
It comes in spreadsheets, or is displayed on reports that just go on and on.
What it looks like is something like this:
Somewhere in there is that important piece of data we
need to find that will tell us who does the best estimates, or which product is
selling well in our region, or whether the market risk for that set of
investments is tolerable.
It just takes some time to find it.
In the mind’s eye
If we could build an image of what those numbers represent, we could scan a “field” of information visually and be drawn quickly to the items of most interest. A corporate treasury estimate like those above, for example, might be shown as an arrow, like this:
The direction of the central (net) arrow shows a
positive or negative flow, the incoming and outgoing components are broken down
(without the need for explanation), the size of the arrow shows the relative
size of the estimate, and the color shows how far off the estimate was to the
actual event (bright red for very much under, bright blue for very much over,
and paler colors for more accurate estimates.
We can pick out the brightly colored ones in this field of estimates at first glance.
Multi-dimensional information
When we are dealing with multiple variables to tell a story, such as the different costs associated with a product like a record album, the shape of the cost structure can be felt intuitively when shown as a picture.
Each axis represents a type of cost, with the “average”
cost in the middle of the ray. The “blobs” of cost that extend furthest out
show higher than average cost, the ones shrunk toward the middle show lower
cost. Experience might show that the best sales aren’t always made with
“average” costs, but that a certain cost shape seems to help. Eventually, we
recognize those right away.
The Technology
The technology to deliver this sort of visual
presentation has caught up with the need. Developments such as Java3D allow a
reasonable development team to bring visualized information to the desktop via the
Web.
How can we help?
The first step in taking advantage of the benefits that Information Visualization brings to end-users is to talk to those users to determine what their information means to them. Translating that meaning into a shape that would best represent that information calls for a creative, intuitive design team.
Software Arts has over 20 years’ experience talking with end-users, asking the right questions, and constructing creative designs. Our participation at the very beginning of a project can help aim it at the right target.
If needed, we can carry through to design, as well as
implementation using the latest Java3D technology.
For more information
See our White Paper on Information Forms.
