84
votes
Accepted
Does visual design really affect UX?
Don Norman's "Why we Love (or Hate) Everyday Things" opens with an account of a famous study on this, conducted by N. Tractinsky in 1999. He tested four different designs of an ATM machine, where each ...
- 30.3k
80
votes
Should a pie chart show the legend for a wedge with 0%?
Show the numbers.
If the user selected three fruits to be shown, Apples, Oranges, and Melons, and only sees Apples and Melons in the pie and in the legend, they will wonder where the Oranges went. If ...
- 1,295
71
votes
Does visual design really affect UX?
Yes, visual design affects user experience
Here's a common meal with only one visual difference. It's enough to drive a dramatically different user experience:
There is more formal literature on ...
- 40.3k
61
votes
Accepted
Is it bad practice to use "Lorem Ipsum" example text in a text-preferences screen?
Designers
When it's your working version and you just want some text in there to visualise the overall page balance, and you'll only share it with other designers, then using Lorum ipsum should ...
- 67.5k
60
votes
Are there any cons in using rounded corners for bar graphs?
There is a paper by Skau et al. (2015) that investigates in how far the effectiveness of bar charts is affected by different types of visual alternations. The authors tesed whether these alternations ...
- 766
53
votes
Background for black and white chart
White is giving the appearance as the absence of data. Data visualization is not about what you intend, it's about what they perceive.
Black and white have connotations as opposites. Some cultural ...
- 22.8k
51
votes
Accepted
Good way to visualize complex AND/OR query/criteria?
I really like the iTunes way of laying out a rule builder. It's quite easy to follow.
With that in mind, here is an example using that paradigm:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with ...
- 966
50
votes
Should a pie chart show the legend for a wedge with 0%?
How about his. show the percentage in the legend:
Apples (20%)
Melons (80%)
Oranges (0%)
- 601
46
votes
Intuitive interface for Composing Boolean Logic?
This one tested well with both the technical and non-technical users and can generate pretty much any possible database query...
The benefits are that it's very clear and a user can drag and drop (or ...
- 15.8k
45
votes
How best to show server availability over a 24 hour period?
I have seen the following visualization used to represent down time and it has been effective:
The illustration in the question requires too much thinking.
The linear time line works well for a 24 ...
- 12.1k
41
votes
Accepted
Are there any cons in using rounded corners for bar graphs?
If the users' goal is to read a specific or accurate value from the bar's length, then @Schmuddi's answer describes the importance of having a flat end. An example of this would be a traditional glass ...
- 19.2k
38
votes
Good way to visualize complex AND/OR query/criteria?
How about building a flowchart?
An OR could be expressed by a fork in the flow. An AND could be expressed by joining two criteria in the same flow path.
For example, ( A ∧ B ) ∨ ( C ∧ D ) could be ...
- 481
35
votes
Background for black and white chart
Stacked bar charts often use a darker colour at the bottom and lighter colour at the top. Bolder darker colours look strong and more supportive of what's on top. Your chart bars looks top heavy, with ...
- 70.6k
33
votes
How should I visualize the average of two bars in a bar chart?
You could show the average in a large bar, and put the separate categories inside in smaller bars.
If you use Excel and use two axes, make sure they both have the same scale.
- 439
31
votes
Is it bad practice to use "Lorem Ipsum" example text in a text-preferences screen?
Font and layout is exactly what Lorem Ipsum is designed to do.
It has been used by type setters and printers since the 1500s.
The idea is that by not having real words the users focus on the layout.
...
- 2,212
31
votes
What is the gender implied by this infographic person
There is enough ambiguity here that labeling and context are necessary
It doesn't matter whether 30%, 50% or 70% of users think this is male (vs female or gender-neutral). There is enough ambiguity ...
- 40.3k
30
votes
Graph with overlapping labels
You have several visualization problems to solve in one graph. How are the users interacting with this?
Your question is focused mostly on labels, however, you also mentioned showing when an element ...
- 22.8k
28
votes
Should a pie chart show the legend for a wedge with 0%?
Yes, show it. The data IS important.
Others gave given good reasons (the inclusion of Oranges clarifies they HAD been taken into account) and suggestions (show percentages or numbers, show a thin ...
- 401
27
votes
Showing a large amount of trend-lines on a single graph
For a quick look, rendering all the lines with low opacity allows seeing the most common values and any outliers quickly:
Then you can provide a way to select groups or specific measurements to ...
- 459
23
votes
Does visual design really affect UX?
You could start by reading interaction-design.org's entry, by Noam Tractinsky, on visual aesthetics. Remember also to read Jeffrey Bardzell's comments on the entry.
Then you could check out Tractinsky'...
- 4,874
22
votes
Background for black and white chart
If black and white maps to the colors of the products, then consider outlining the white bar to add some contrast.
Some Tips: What to consider when creating stacked column charts
- 4,988
21
votes
Accepted
Making a Streak Visualization More Intuitive
Your graphic seems to require far too much information to describe what it means. Github does this through a table of Longest Streak next to Current Streak. It is easier to understand with just text.
...
- 7,168
21
votes
Should a pie chart show the legend for a wedge with 0%?
Don't use a pie chart
Your problem stems from the fact you're using a pie chart. Pie charts are simply not a very good way of representing data (see here, here, here or here for some discussions of ...
- 1,183
20
votes
What's a better way to show number of staff at a location on a bar graph?
If you need to show correlation (or lack of it) between two sets of data like this, a dual-axis chart can do that. Here, the blobs are shown on the right-hand axis
(What I can't do easily is put the ...
- 4,266
19
votes
Accepted
Graph with overlapping labels
If it is absolutely necessary to see all the amounts in detail all the time you could go with a variation of your second solution but still keep the figures in one column. like this
Alternatively you ...
- 2,832
18
votes
What's a better way to show number of staff at a location on a bar graph?
Maybe simply show it close to but separate from the graph? So both pieces of information are clear to see and understand:
- 359
17
votes
Does visual design really affect UX?
I agree with most of the points that have been made so far, so I'll just add one that hasn't been touched on yet.
One of the things often overlooked about visual design is the impact that it has on ...
- 576
15
votes
Intuitive interface for Composing Boolean Logic?
There is a jquery plugin to do this, called QueryBuilder, which do this in an interesting way : http://mistic100.github.io/jQuery-QueryBuilder/
- 275
15
votes
Accepted
How to best visually represent a dev team's skillset versus project needs?
Consider the following:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
Bullet graphs provide a condense and clear way of comparing data when you have a list of skills where ...
- 8,481
15
votes
Does visual design really affect UX?
There were scientific studies in aviation, that show, that visual aesthetics of control dashboards in plane's cockpit affects effectiveness of flight operations.
So visually appealing design affects ...
- 2,637
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible