Questions tagged [info-visualisation]
Any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message.
584
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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 ...
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20
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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, ...
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5
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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 ...
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71
votes
14
answers
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Does visual design really affect UX?
I am really concerned about the effects of visual design on user experience, but as this may seem too broad, let me clarify it a little.
My statement is that, if the user can find the information he ...
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59
votes
10
answers
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Should a pie chart show the legend for a wedge with 0%?
I and my colleague have a difference of opinion.
We are creating a chart of, lets say, fruits. Like this one:
But what if the value of oranges is 0%? Do we show the legend anyway? Like this:
Or ...
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53
votes
8
answers
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Should I fill empty space in bars?
It's about bar-charts in a table.
Every row has a bar, which visualises a value of the row.
The biggest value of the whole table is the maximum of the bars and not necessarily on the same table-page....
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50
votes
12
answers
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Is it bad practice to use "Lorem Ipsum" example text in a text-preferences screen?
I'm the developer of an application where text plays a major role in the user interface. Users can adjust the style of the text in a preference screen. I have added an example text to the preference ...
- 1,639
47
votes
10
answers
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Display big numbers in a small area
I am developing an accounting app where I display several orders. Every order has a price.
I have a box where I would like to display the price as shown below:
This works pretty well for fairly ...
- 584
45
votes
9
answers
4k
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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 ...
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45
votes
7
answers
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Why is tree representation of data becoming unpopular?
I'm asking not about professional software like IDE's, but about OS GUI and web interfaces.
A few years ago there was File manager in Windows, Gopher and other interfaces and data models like this.
...
user32248
44
votes
11
answers
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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
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41
votes
7
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9k
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Good way to visualize complex AND/OR query/criteria?
I'm maintaining a webapp with a feature dubbed the "rule form". It's essentially a complex HTML form that users use to build a "rule" with criteria that can be grouped into AND/OR blocks. When all the ...
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41
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5
answers
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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 "...
- 521
35
votes
3
answers
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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 guesses)...
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32
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3
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Are there any cons in using rounded corners for bar graphs?
I remember reading somewhere that bars with rounded edges may look inaccurate. But I'm not too sure about it. Can someone throw some light on this?
- 1,231
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7
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Best way to display code to non-programmers
I'm asked to analyze the program responsible for printing our invoices. (Via SAP script)
This program is pretty old and contains more than 4.000 lines of code. It sets a lot of different variables ...
- 253
25
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15
answers
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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'
...
- 359
25
votes
5
answers
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Best UI approach to align the column titles of reports
I would like to know what the best approach is to align header columns according to their data type.
I haven't found any Human Design Interface articles explaining this.
Should the header column ...
22
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6
answers
4k
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How should I visualize the average of two bars in a bar chart?
I am presenting results from an experiment in an academic publication. Here is what the figure currently looks like:
The gray bars are the averages of the red and the blue bars.
Goals
I want to show ...
- 371
20
votes
4
answers
4k
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Background for black and white chart
I have a plot where I stack the color white and black as values by month.
I would use white as background color but the data is black and white as the color is. I'm using blue which I don't like.
Any ...
- 217
19
votes
2
answers
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Interface for Data Brushing
For an interactive graph I'm using a UX pattern called Data Brushing. My starting point is a d3js example by Mike Bostock.
This is what it looks like in its initial state:
The smaller graph below ...
- 1,442
19
votes
3
answers
1k
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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 ...
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19
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6
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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 ...
- 1,577
18
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4
answers
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What is the gender implied by this infographic person
I was wondering if there is a rule/guide on if this info graphic person actually implies male/female - assuming it is used without the opposing specifically female human graphic
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5
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How to cluster map markers with different statuses
We're designing an application that displays a large number of markers on a map. We need to do some clustering on these markers, but the problem is that each marker has four possible options for ...
- 181
17
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8
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Making a Streak Visualization More Intuitive
I'm currently working on a website for tracking habit change. On the report page, I have goal cards users interact with in order to record their progress:
The donut chart in this example is trying to ...
- 245
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4
answers
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Showing a large amount of trend-lines on a single graph
I'm designing a dashboard which has a graph showing the humidity notification trends across multiple locations over a selected timeline.
The challenge I'm facing is that there's 70-100 locations that ...
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17
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4
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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 ...
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16
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12
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Honest way to show your skills in Portfolio
So i have started seeing this a lot in portfolios of designers.
This person has a title that says "My Skills",
and at the bottom are bar graphs that are in percentages.
So I asked this question - "...
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3
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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 ...
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4
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How best to show server availability over a 24 hour period?
I have a customer who asked me to provide a "Server Availability" chart for the last 24 hours that looks like this one:
Y represents hours (0 - 23); X represents minutes (0 - 59)
In this example you ...
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3
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How to best visually represent a dev team's skillset versus project needs?
I need to visually represent a dev team's skill set (and proficiency) against a project portfolio's required skill set. I have two separate tables, one for team members, and one for projects.
Here is ...
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15
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4
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Tabular vs Card-based presentation, which is better for lots of data?
Basically, we have a long list of stuff that has, on its on, a lot of details. We are wondering whether to use a table or put each set in a rectangular card format. See below:
On one hand, the table ...
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15
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1
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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 ...
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15
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3
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2k
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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 ...
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14
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4
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How to visualize data when one data series is significantly bigger than the others
I'm working on visualizing some data and it turns out that there are cases where one "data set" is significantly bigger (in terms of values) than the rest. It probably needs to be barchart as I don't ...
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14
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5
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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 ...
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7
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Is there a visual way to represent drag capability?
In this data visualization chart, we wanted to make user understand that the chart is interactive.
When someone clicks and drags any point, the selection expands. This helps drilling down in the data....
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13
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6
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796
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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 ...
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13
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How do you visually represent "progress" on a negative (lower is better) goal?
I may have some terminology wrong but I think the idea is sound.
There are a variety of ways to represent progress when you are increasing a number and trying to get to some set number. Usually you'...
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4
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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?
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3
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Graph with overlapping labels
I have a web app that builds and displays a bar chart based on dollar amounts. A typical graph looks something like this:
As you can see, the layers at the bottom of the graph have dollar amounts ...
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5
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Making color blind friendly plots that look professional
Based on this question I've been racking my brain trying to find a color scheme for journal publications that is color blind friendly and that I actually like. I've tried color brewer and other sites, ...
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11
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5
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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 ...
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5
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graph exploration and data overload
I love to visualize huge graphs (this is a hobby: http://anvaka.github.io/pm/ ). One problem however that keeps me awake at night, is data overload in such graphs.
If I render all connections inside ...
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4
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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 y-...
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4
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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 ...
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7
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344
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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 (...
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5
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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 ...
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10
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6
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Displaying multiple levels of hierarchy in a table
I’m working on a payroll app for construction contractors. I’m trying to show hierarchy in a table for one contractor (In this case, “Vandelay Industries”. I want the user to be able to see where ...
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