Always ask yourself: “what can I remove from this chart”? Remove Excel defaults, remove grid lines, make the chart smaller, use soft colors, remove irrelevant labels, remove the legend (by directly labeling series), remove series that you don’t really need, remove frames, remove decimal places, remove visual fluff. Then ask yourself: “what can I add … Read more
I am sure that, if you aren’t a visitor from another planet, you already saw this video. I’m playing with the blog’s template during this week, trying to add interesting stuff from the information visualization point of view, like videos and images, and this is a good test video. This will not change my focus … Read more
More data = better decisions, right? Not always. When you are getting more information than you can process within a specific time period information overload starts creeping. Confusion, stress, anxiety and low motivation usually follow. Can we prevent that? In general, the more information you have, the more accurate your decisions will be. But at … Read more
Do you need VBA to create an Excel dashboard? Should you take the plunge and go beyond Excel formulas? Well, I think you should, but feel free to disagree. Charley Kyd, commenting on my review of his e-book, disagrees: As a consultant, I visited too many clients where an Excel user had written some macros, … Read more
This is the time for scatter plots in the 10 x 10 charting tips series: A scatter plot is square by definition (I forget that sometimes…); In some cases, it makes more sense to use a scatter plot than two column charts: for example, instead of having a column chart to display product market share … Read more
These are 10 basic tips for column and bar chart design: A column chart is not a skyline: if you can’t see the individual patterns, consider removing some series or create several smaller charts; If you are charting categorical data sort the columns; if there is more than one series, allow the user to sort … Read more
The other day I was reading Dundas’ whitepaper “Best Practices for Building Digital Dashboards” (PDF) [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][update: this whitepaper is no longer available] and you know what? What they say makes a lot … Read more