Three new types of graphing/charting object - sparklines, bullet charts and heat maps used in conjunction with a powerful new technique known as micro-charting, which allows complete mini charts to be embedded in single cells, can transform online dashboards, business scorecards, and what-if simulations. Here is a simple introduction.

Sparklines

Sparklines were invented by Edward Tufte, a pioneer in the field of Information Design..

The figure at the top of the article is an example of Sparklines - for much more information check out Edward's book Beautiful Evidence.

The main aim of the Sparkline is to reduce clutter and provide key information in the form of lines supported by minimal annotation.

Bullet Graphs

Bullet Graphs were invented by Stephen Few, an innovator in the field of business intelligence, and author of the book Information Dashboard Design.

Here is a great overview paper by Stephen with lots of example bullet graphs.

Bullet Graphs were inspired by the simplicity of thermometer chart with the objective of showing performance against various points (e.g. poor, average, good) in a clearer and more information efficient manner than circular dashboard gauges.

Heat Maps

Heat Maps have been used for many years in the field of science and provide two-dimensional coloured matrices.

The objective of heat maps are to better present tabular data in a way where you can instantly see the big picture and spot outliers and groups very easily.

The figure below is an example Heat Map from my book The Networked Enterprise which I use to summarise the collective capability areas of collaborative business networks into a number of different zones.

Microcharting

Microcharting is an important new development in graphs and charts which can be used with sparklines, bullet charts and heat maps and provides the ability to put a chart in a single cell - rather than fill a large area.

Microcharting is a very reasonably priced Excel add-in provided by vendors such as Jabsoft and Bonavista Systems.

Not surprisingly Microcharts are now an integral part of excel 2010 along with Sparklines and Heat Maps. Bullet Graphs do not seem to be a chart type within Excel 2010 but there are excellent instructions by Charlie Kyd and by Matt Grams for creating them by customising standard excel charts.

Interestingly there is considerable controversy about Microsoft's attempt to patent its sparklines within excel.

Ken Thompson is an expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities, virtual teams and management simulation and has published two landmark books:

Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Best Designs

The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks

Ken writes the highly popular bioteams blog which has over 600 articles on all aspects of bioteams (aka organizational biomimicry) - in other words how human groups can learn from nature's best teams.

Ken is also founder of an exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual/mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more responsive and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques.

The latest Swarmteams implementation is SwarmTribes which helps social object owners (e.g. musicians/bands, sports teams, film-makers) and good cause sponsors (e.g. Volunteering, Environmental, Public Health) to form unique collaborations with their fans/supporters for mutual benefit.

Tags: bullet charts, dashboards, heat maps, simulators, sparklines

Bioteams Books Reviews

Predictably Irrational teams

May 6, 2008 | article by Ken Thompson in Book Reviews (37)

Teams, networks, groups and their members behave in an irrational way but quite predictably so. A good team leader will understand this and use it to everyone’s advantage. One key point is to knowing each team members motivations and whether they are operating in “social economy” or “market economy” mindsets.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

Comments (4) | Permalink

continue reading

Click here to check all Bioteams book reviews

Related Visualization/Analytics Articles

Zoho Reports: good free tool for building web dashboards

May 5, 2012 | article by Ken Thompson in Online Collaboration Tools (44), Visualization/Analytics (10)

It's a common problem - you have developed some very useful excel charts and dashboards and now you need to publish and share them on the web. There are lots of excel add-ins and add-ons (and I must have tried them all) - the problem is most will either be very expensive or disappoint you either in terms of their restrictions or how nicely they present your data.

Comments | Permalink

continue reading

Data mining made easy with DMF

February 3, 2012 | article by Ken Thompson in Visualization/Analytics (10)

Data Mining, a hi-tech buzzword for many years, is about excavating useful patterns which are hidden deep in your data to give you valuable insights you could not otherwise find. I was looking for a data mining tool in the same broad price bracket as Excel but which was also robust and did not require you to be a mathematics genius to use it. Surprisingly I managed to find a product which exactly met my needs!

Comments | Permalink

continue reading

Real-time dashboarding of Social Media conversations

August 3, 2010 | article by Ken Thompson in Visualization/Analytics (10)

Interesting post on the idashboard blog which shows up how mass sentiment expressed through social media such as twitter can be automatically extracted into data visualization software and the results displayed in almost real-time. The number of applications for this type of social media dashboarding must be huge in both business and civic engagement

Comments | Permalink

continue reading