Any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message.
62
votes
6answers
4k views
Why are election results presented by a geographic map instead of a cartogram map?
This morning (in Sweden) I woke up early to watch the 2012 presidential election in United States. I watched different news sources but all of them presented a geographical map of the results instead ...
45
votes
18answers
2k views
How can I keep up-to-date with the latest thinking about designing complex, rich applications?
I am designing a very complex eco-system of apps.
I like to make sure I am up-to-date with the latest thinking, research and trends in app and UI/UX design. I find that there are many great articles, ...
34
votes
8answers
1k views
What would be a good way to thumbnail audio?
I want to represent an audio file in an image with a maximum size of 180×180 pixels.
I have been thinking about something similar to what Soundcloud does, although it will require some chopping and ...
27
votes
7answers
2k views
Intuitive interface for Composing Boolean Logic?
I'm interested to know how people have, or would construct an interface which simplifies constructing logical boolean conditions? (Yes, it's a database query builder) In my mind a bad interface has ...
25
votes
5answers
696 views
How to visualize data with extreme value differences?
I am working on some routines for a client application to visualize data in a 3d bar chart style. The data consists mostly of smaller values with only a few large values. For example:
6,942,535,341
...
18
votes
3answers
427 views
How to show progress towards goal?
On our intranet we display some numbers for our employees so they can keep track of their performance goals. Currently it's just a table.
We'd like something more visual, and this was the first ...
17
votes
6answers
629 views
How to represent an X/Y mood data to a user within a very small space (32x32)?
I'm building a mood tracker app for iPhone and am running into a user experience issue - I would like users to be able to track their moods, along with other events in a vertical "history".
The mood ...
16
votes
13answers
942 views
How to build a budgeting interface (sum of items must equal 100)?
I'm trying to build a visual web interface where users can distribute a budget over some (varying) number of items. For example, if the budget is 100 points, I might allocate:
50 points to 'Apples'
...
14
votes
1answer
320 views
Tufte's data density, readability and comparison
I'm intrigued by Tufte's data density. While I love his definition of data / ink ratio which can be easily measured, I have hard time measuring data density.
He defines data density in a graphic as a ...
13
votes
3answers
1k views
How many visually distinct colors can accurately be associated with a separated legend in a figure?
For charts and graphs it's a relatively common question by programmers to want to procedurally generate an arbitrary number of colors that are visually distinct.
Various research (or educated ...
12
votes
4answers
1k views
What is the best way to visually present a sitemap?
Do you know which are the common patterns for a graphical representation of a sitemap?
11
votes
6answers
248 views
How to present weighted values
I have a formula which is used to calculate certain scores. The formula has some parameters (shown in the image below) including a Weight parameter that is changed dynamically (the rest of the inputs ...
11
votes
5answers
4k views
What is a good icon for illustrating expand (and collapse) all? [closed]
I'm trying to devise an icon to indicate that when it is clicked, it will collapse all the nodes in a tree. The tree contains profiles which already have an icon, so ideally I'm looking for a ...
11
votes
5answers
449 views
What are techniques for showing a future state on an empty dashboard?
I am working on a new web application that will have a user dashboard displaying lots of great information with charts, notifications, alerts, etc. The actual data populating the charts will not be ...
10
votes
4answers
589 views
Alternative graphical representation of a goal achievement?
The client has a set goal X that he wants to achieve every month and he wants this represented graphically and I agree that it would be a good way for people to easily see how far along they are.
The ...
10
votes
5answers
299 views
Reference books for data visualisation and dashboard design [closed]
Please could you recommend some reference texts or other resources concerned with business data visualisation and dashboard design.
There's Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few on Amazon but ...
10
votes
4answers
319 views
How do I represent null values in a line chart?
I am building a web-based analytics platform. I am looking to plot a line chart that represents the number of seconds it took for me to reach a live service agent via phone on a given day.
In the ...
9
votes
8answers
433 views
Representing a network of product dependencies as a diagram
The company I work for builds solutions - these are the items we take to market. Solutions consist of programs (1-to-many) - these are repeatable projects, or 'recipes' that we piece together to make ...
9
votes
7answers
234 views
How do you decide whether additional information is harmful?
In any primary user interface screen, a designer must find a balance between too little and too much information.
Often, adding additional status information is cheap, technically. Therefore, some ...
9
votes
4answers
386 views
How best to show the 'weight' (importance) of bullet-ed items in a non-intrusive (creative) way?
I have a web page with a bulleted list of items each with an associated weight i.e. level of importance. The bullets are of equal width but not necessarily of equal height. Here's a graphical ...
9
votes
4answers
639 views
Good ways to handle precisely overlapping data points in a graph?
In an application, I have a graph of markers--either with or without connecting lines--in which it is possible to have data points, and therefore markers, that are at the exact same location, even if ...
9
votes
4answers
176 views
When to omit zero from numeric table presentation
Give a table of numeric data in which many cells contain zero, under what circumstances would it be appropriate or preferable to present the zero-value cells blank or otherwise obscured (eg. in ...
9
votes
1answer
165 views
Are there any resources about connotations related to visual elements from a cultural perspective?
I've been wondering about this for some time, are there any libraries or resources online that show what connotations are attached to any given design element from a cultural perspective?
I am aware ...
8
votes
5answers
1k views
What is the best way to graphically display item's position in a ranking?
My app has a table containing a list of financial securities. One of the columns is the security's position in a list of all available securities ranked by performance.
For example: security XYZ is ...
8
votes
3answers
199 views
Information visualization - display 6 related ranges on a single chart
I sell apples and oranges.
I know how many items of each kind I expect to sell today and I know how many I've actually sold so far. I need to design a chart displaying this data in real time. What's ...
8
votes
4answers
283 views
Does “ink is expensive” apply in a user interface context?
Edward Tufte in the book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information states, more or less, that ink is expensive. Any ink which is not used to actually convey information is chartjunk and it will ...
8
votes
5answers
652 views
Are Sparklines appropriate for use in dashboards of reporting software?
For those not aware of Sparklines, here is an example:
http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/#BulletGraph/FirstLook
Would these work well to really give users a quick dashboard/reporting overview of ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
Ways to visualise a user journey
I would like some opinions on user journeys and how to present them, specifically to the client. What do you think is the best way to present them and what tools would you use to create them?
Do you ...
8
votes
3answers
165 views
Reputation Scoring Signals
My Question:
How is the UX of the best, or any, web reputation systems capturing and
representing offline influence within a community?
What are the signals that are quantified or illuminated in ...
8
votes
2answers
390 views
What are Good Techniques to Visualize Binary Differences?
I'm particularly interested in diff-based visualizations. Code diffs are the most straightforward and easy as they're used for a long time and have a lot of examples of 1, 2, and 3 pane views. For ...
8
votes
1answer
237 views
How to handle out-of-range data in a realtime plot?
Background
I am working on real-time data acquisition and visualization software for a scientific measurement device. The software gathers data from the device, and plots the data in real time. Data ...
8
votes
3answers
197 views
How to go about presenting a large family tree?
I'm currently developing a game, and one of the features involves breeding the creatures you collect.
Since it's a game, a large amount of promiscuity is to be expected, and individuals could ...
8
votes
2answers
292 views
Chart drill-down affordance?
I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for improving the usability of chart drill-down?
More specifically, imagine we have a bar chart (or any other visualization) where a user is able to select ...
7
votes
5answers
455 views
Visualize time-series data
I have a lot of time-series data. I would like to visualize this data, so that I could spot patterns like the following:
"About five days after event X, event Y is very likely to happen"
or
"A ...
7
votes
4answers
319 views
How to display hardware life expectancy?
For a web application I'm developing my manager has asked me to display the life expectancy of a hardware component. The component will according to the manufacturer handle at least 16 000 000 ...
7
votes
4answers
246 views
nice way to display a text message for two dates (range)
I have two arbitrary dates.
I was wondering if somebody can suggest the rules to create a text message which tells in a very effective way what the two dates are.
Let's assume that my solution is ...
7
votes
5answers
545 views
What is the best way to create an eye-catching display of numeric values in a web page?
I am going to design a management level monitoring page for displaying some sums and counts. No interaction is allowed and it will be used as a monitoring page on a big LCD in the managers view. The ...
7
votes
2answers
277 views
How to best label age group boundaries?
We're organizing people into age buckets. For example: 0-20 yrs, 20-40yrs, 40-60yrs...
I'm struggling with how to best label the age buckets, there are two options:
(A) Don't repeat the values, so: ...
7
votes
3answers
94 views
Commentary book on information architecture outside the Internet
I know there is no single correct answer to my question, so I would be grateful if mods could turn my question into community wiki.
I’m looking for a book about information architecture in everyday ...
7
votes
2answers
201 views
Interesting visualizations for a personnel in-out control
I have a database with the data of all the company personnel in and out through several facilities (All people must put their fingerprint in the scanner to open doors)
I'm looking for interesting way ...
7
votes
2answers
156 views
Best visual representation for monthly values
What kind of data visualizations do you use to show a binary state of a month?
By "binary" i mean just two options for a month. Either "available" or "not available". The last vis on the example ...
7
votes
1answer
389 views
Visualization advice for mix of graph/hierarchical data
I have hierarchical data that looks like this:
I need to come up with a way to display it with the requirements I'll list momentarily. It is not a tree because there can be cycles (ignore ...
6
votes
7answers
479 views
Display Email Address + Website? Or is it redundant?
When putting contact data on a page, do you use email and website separately or do you just go with the assumption that the user will get the website from the email (given that it's ...
6
votes
5answers
476 views
how to explain logarithmic scale to a non-techie user
In the product we sell, we show comparisons between websites on a number of metrics. Some of those metrics are best displayed with linear graphs, some are best displayed with logarithmic graphs.
...
6
votes
3answers
2k views
Examples of nice looking html tables [closed]
All tables on my app look like sh*t, it's making me lose hair, I've been trying to make them look better but I end up making them look worse, do you have any examples of nice looking tables? ...
6
votes
2answers
447 views
What's the best way to represent a timeline graphic
I am trying to represent the following server downtime:
(I have couple of more combinations, I have removed for brevity)
Server A : 4:00 - 4:30 AM
Server B : 5:30 - 6:00 AM
Server C : 6:00 - 6:30 ...
6
votes
2answers
295 views
Real vs perceived circle area in data visualisation
I am about to visualise some data using circles on top of a map but I am concerned about the real vs perceived circle size. I've read about a bias in the perception of the area of a circle. The best ...
6
votes
2answers
597 views
Visualization / Chart for resource workload planning
I am looking for a good way to aid a service team head in assigning incoming tasks to his people. Tasks are scheduled for a certain week, not for exact days. Team members can take roughly 3-10 of this ...
6
votes
2answers
128 views
Multipart progress / status bar colours
I am working on an application that needs to show users their currents status / progress in performing a task on a number of items. There are three states that each item can have:
New (blue) - ...
6
votes
3answers
532 views
Best UI approach to align the column titles of reports
I would like to know what are the best approach to align header columns according with the data type.
I haven't found any Human Design Interface article explaining this.
Do the header column must ...
