Communicating with Data: Using analytics + visualization to inform

Today's world is focused on the "New" - new ways to communicate, new interfaces, new interactions, and new technologies. We continue to innovate with things, but in this constant race, it's easy to forget about humanity - about empathy - about communicating simply, and concisely. One of the biggest buzzwords lately is "Analytics." In honor of this post, let me quickly define what I'm talking about:

Analytics: A process and result of describing, interrogating, and understanding information. Types of analytics include:

  • Network and Relationship
  • Segmentation / Clustering
  • Behavior
  • Geospatial
  • Prediction and Simulation
  • Text and Unstructured

Visualization: An art-form we use to communicate insightful information. For the examples above, let's look at the 2018 Olympics, which, at the time of this writing, are taking place. Below are some types of analytics, with an example of how they might be visualized.

  • Networks and Relationship
    •  show the relationship between North Korea and South Korea, and the economics of their relationship
  • Segmentation / Clustering
    • aggregate and describe size, proximity and important features of countries with and without medals
  • Behavior
    • show patterns and model characteristics of Olympic athletes and their competition routines
  • Geospatial
    • show medal count maps by county and event
  • Predictions/Simulations
    • show medal counts if certain countries swept events
  • Text and Unstructured
    • show how people are reacting to a the Olympics on social media

Now, one thing you'll notice is I wrote all of this down - yet, I clearly describe "showing" particular insights from the 2018 Winter Olympics. This is where visualization comes in! As analytics is a practice, visualization is a toolkit we can use to help communicate things that might be harder to understand otherwise.

In analytics, we're in a bit of a revolution. This means we have a myriad of tools at our disposal that can allow us to communicate in many many ways. We have R, we have Python, we have Tableau, we have Power BI. But despite the technology, it's still up to us to do this, and do it well.  The best way to do this is to put ourselves in our user's shoes. Asking ourselves:


2. Is this analysis easy, or hard? If it's hard, how will we make it easy?

3. What knowledge should users have? How will I give them the right background?

4. What type of data literacy does my audience have? What is baseline to understanding? How can I use visual literacy to help my audience?

5. What kind of chart literacy does my audience have? What's the appropriate visualization?


I'll tackle these questions, one by one, and use technology at the end to discuss how we can communicate insights better. At the end of our day - this should be our goal. Design is how we'll get there.

Comments

  1. Aaron jhonsonApril 19, 2022 at 5:13 AM

    I truly appreciate the time and work you put into sharing your knowledge. I found this topic to be quite effective and beneficial to me. Thank you very much for sharing. Continue to blog.

    Data Engineering Services 

    AI & ML Solutions

    Data Analytics Services

    Data Modernization Services

    ReplyDelete
  2. ZetarisApril 28, 2022 at 6:16 AM

    This blog gives us more insights and inspiration towards knowing about Analytics Visualization. It is useful for the people who want to know about it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flow, Azure ML and Power BI: Achievement Unlocked

Image
If you've been following Microsoft lately, you'll note Microsoft's self proclaimed, "mobile first, cloud first" strategy. In my opinion, there is no better beneficiary of this new direction than Microsoft's Power BI offering. Power BI, a self-service BI solution allows you to create and author slick reports and publish them to a a web portal to share with users inside your organization, outside of it or even the general public. An added benefit of the solution is its rapid release schedule, providing updates on a monthly basis, coupled with a growing user community providing support and custom visuals. Custom visuals allow you to extend the solution and visualize your data in new and unique ways specific to your business requirements.  While this at a high level is designed for mass adoption, what puts the solution over the top is the disruption pricing - free to 9.99/user/month. The price schedule provides you with additional features and functionality mostly
Read more

In gratitude: 10 things I learned at the Power BI World Tour

I feel fortunate to have been able to attend and present at the sold-out, two-day, Power BI World Tour  in Chicago. As a presenter, it was a great opportunity to share knowledge, experience, tips and tricks related related to Power BI. If you came to my session - thank you.  To me - these conferences aren't just about the presenters, or the sponsors, or the attendees. They shine in the way passionate people come together and share ideas. As such, I want to discuss my experience - notably, the amount of new things I learned. Events like these are great ways to learn more about features, get insights related to roadmap, and most importantly, learn how peers are using the technology. What follows are 10 things I learned: Ten Things Learned at the Power BI World Tour: 1. Self Service BI is changing the way companies work together  I met many Excel users evolving from VLOOKUPs to PowerPivot to Power BI. These business users talked about the ability to go
Read more

What's important? Do my users know? How will they know? - The WHAT

Image
In a previous post,  I explored the paradox of Analytics, Visualization and Communication. At the end, I teased the best way to do this is thoughtful design. I asked the question:   What's important?  Do my users know? How will they know? Design is fundamentally a purposeful application of context that helps people understand and use things. That's it. When it comes to data visualization, this often means helping users understand, WHAT?   Another question to ask yourself is actually, SO WHAT?  That's right - why does this matter? Why is this relevant? This analysis should be meaningful to someone. In a business context, your analysis should be effective and touch an organizational value chain, such as customer retention, supply chain, profitability, brand sentiment, etc. That "WHAT" should be a critical component of why you put the visualization together - so don't lose sight of it. To aid this, here are some questions to prompt thoughtfulness abou
Read more