Then again, musicians start learning to read and write music and play chords, and engineers learn physics, materials, and how to manipulate CAD environments – so why not training on data visualizations?

Thankfully, there is a ready supply of introductory material and examples on the web, with links to more advanced stuff. Let’s start with some design concepts (we’ll do specific tools and techniques later …) Note, of course, that this is just a small selection of interesting stuff I’ve read over the past few months.

Fundamentals First

If you like your training in small bites, Mathias Shapiro uses the Pecha Kucha technique to lay out the basic principles. It’s a nice ice breaker – the fast-paced style glosses over things a bit (and mispels a word or two), but you get the general concepts.

Over on Flowing Data, Nathan Yau has a pretty nice write up on getting to know and understand the fundamentals of graphical perception. It’s a summary of a 1984 article from the Journal of the American Statistical Association; if Nathan’s points (as it were) on how people decode visual clues pique your interest, try diving into the entire article.

Finally – on Understanding Graphics, Connie Malamed has a nice article on 5 myths of visual communication – instructing / learning by concentrating on what not to do. Seeing things “in reverse” can be an effective learning strategy – the opposite of “I’ll know it when I see it“….

However, I do take minor exception to some elements of myth 3 and 4 – there can be value in animation. Case in point – I was always enthralled by the miracle of the sewing machine – could never imagine how that actually worked – until I saw this nifty little animation (from World Of Technology, via FFFFOUND!)

Click for the original ...

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: abstraction, Art, CAD, data, data visualization, Design, graphical perception, information, pecha kucha

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/learning-about-data-visualization/feed/ 2 http://www.cazh1.com/art-and-science-of-data-visualization/ http://www.cazh1.com/art-and-science-of-data-visualization/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:02:45 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=1088 “Data Visualization” has been an extremely active and popular topic for a few years – we can use Google’s Timeline search feature to see the growth in interest since 1980:

Google Timeline results for

That local high in July of this year was due in no small part to David McCandless’ Information is Beautiful talk at TED this past summer. It appeared in my RSS stream here, here, and here, so I got the hint, spent 18 minutes watching it, and got suitably jazzed on the power and potential of visualizations.

McCandless uses a variety of visualization techniques to generate insight into a wide range of topics ..

• Mountains out of Molehills – what are we afraid of? Funny stuff, but hidden patterns that jump out at you with just a little extra context.
• Facebook break-ups – at 6:15, the roller-coaster graph of predictable relationship demise, recently Slashdotted
• Military Budgets – a digression into the knack we all have of misunderstanding / misrepresenting that facts via statistics. Did you know that Myanmar is the world’s biggest war machine (as a percent of GDP)?

An important section comes when McCandless talks about the start of his work in design of data visualizations. Note that he’s not had any formal training – it was just sort of dormant within – and is very probably there within all of us, practically forced on us with the information overload of the web-enabled era. The bulk of your sensory input is visual, and the majority of our perception is happening unconsciously.

… the eye is exquisitely sensitive to patterns and variations … [it's] the Language of the Eye. And if you combine the Language of the Eye with the Language of the Mind – which is about words and numbers and concepts – you start speaking two languages simultaneously, each enhancing the other …

I do agree with his point that an effective visualization is self-evident, and appreciated by many – but I do not think it’s easy for the average Data Consumer to see themselves as a Data Artist, one who can conjure the magic on command. I have noticed that most of the data visualizations catching the public’s eye are not the ones you can easily generate with Excel (data navigation and manipulation tool for the masses). McCandless’ “balloon race” interactive diagram of health supplements is sublimely useful, easy to understand – and beyond the tool- and skill-sets of most of us.

Nevertheless – the inspiration, the examples, and tools are out there, and I am convinced that there are more Data Artists among us – they just don’t know it yet. I’m starting a series of posts today – I’ve been following many blogs and writing about this topic for some time – but it’s been a few months, and I’ve got a big backlog of topics to cover.

So check out the McCandless video; be prepared to get psyched, and then carve out some time to join me in this review. Data is the new soil, as McCandless points out – and just like good writing, those who can effectively help other visualize data and have their own insights will harvest some interesting insights, for themselves and their employers.

(… and learn how the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was carbon-neutral!)

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Art, cognitive science, communicating complexity, data visualization, David McCandless, Design, Facebook, Google, hidden patterns, information overload, Inspiration, multi-media information sharing, Presentations, Science, TED, video, visual, visualization, visualization techniques

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/art-and-science-of-data-visualization/feed/ 1 http://www.cazh1.com/interface-design-skills-for-coders-and-vice-versa/ http://www.cazh1.com/interface-design-skills-for-coders-and-vice-versa/#comments Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:10:52 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=999 Like a technical peanut butter cup – two great skill sets that go great together. What really happens when artists and coders mash things up?

Click for the original ...

Intuitive Interactions: Are application developers adept at effective design? I think, as a group, no – witness all of the effort put forth to wrap “user friendly screens” in front of ERPs major and minor. Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, SQLWindows, and their ilk spawned legions of wanna-be UI designers, presented with a multitude of gadgets, and unable to resist adding one of each. Hussein Nasser posted a good illustration of the techie’s over-reliance on artifice – and some pretty interesting rules of thumb for the programmer to think about when building a dialog like this. How clever, we will use their love of math against them …

Subtle Style: Brant Steen shows how extremely subtle design elements can really class up (sic) your user forms. As he points out in his preface, It doesn’t take much. My favorite bit of his trickery is using gradients to delineate input boxes on forms – a nice combination of design sense and coding skill. Want more examples? How about Tom from PSDFAN, with a nice collection of subtle grunge sites.

Media Mastery: To reiterate; a dash of design can make a better coder, and some well-crafted code can add to the designer’s pallet. Craig Buckler presents arguments for and against coding skills in designer brains – but I am convinced that the more you know about your medium, the greater your ability to make a strong impression. And, as Craig points out, if you can appreciate what it might take to productionize your visions, it will go a long way towards peaceful coexistence with the developer crew. Even the mighty Frank Lloyd Wright experienced some gaps between his ideas and reality.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Art, artistic expression, coders, communication medium, CSS, Design, Frank Lloyd Wright, functional design, GUIs, interfaces, style

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/interface-design-skills-for-coders-and-vice-versa/feed/ 1 http://www.cazh1.com/design-thinking-and-process-practical-examples-2-of-2/ http://www.cazh1.com/design-thinking-and-process-practical-examples-2-of-2/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 01:13:54 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=974 So, design thinking can have a positive impact on how you do what you do, and it may very well be hidden inside, waiting to get out.

Ok, you are intrigued, you might even believe you can release the designer in you. Where to next? How to get started?

Practical Expressions of “Good Design”

Like most tech folks, you will need something a bit more concrete that just seeing something effective on the screen; some guiding principles and “rules of thumb” are always helpful.

(via Global Nerdy) – 10 Things CEOs Need to Know About Design, from Jason Putorti. Of course, I’m drawn to his assertion that Design is more than pretty pictures (sounds familiar). More than that – Jason covers a decent starter set of elements in a great design process …

Another slide set (previously) comes from Stephen Anderson – I am particularly high on this one because it gets pretty specific about what you are designing for – the “hierarchy of needs for user interaction” (slide 15).

And, via sitepoint, a link to Dan Lockton‘s Design with Intent Toolkit, an excellent resource with solid advice, including ways to break through design logjams by approaching the problem in different ways (“lenses”).

(yes, Dan’s site design does look familiar … good designers think alike?)

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Art, Design, design thinking, effective design, Execution, interfaces, slide set, slideshare, usability, user interface

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/design-thinking-and-process-practical-examples-2-of-2/feed/ 1 http://www.cazh1.com/design-and-change-management/ http://www.cazh1.com/design-and-change-management/#comments Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:49:11 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=907

Click for the original ...

I have developed a few strongly-held architectural beliefs, and one came up in conversation last week, during a spirited discussion on minimal quality requirements for a[ny] data mart. I hold that the data copied from source to destination must be provably correct and complete with little effort. When agile-ly rolling staged deliverables into production, I may not have all the attributes in place for full flexibility of drill down, but if you have [say] 1248 records in the source system, representing $154,238.54 of transactions, you better have exactly the same amounts in the reporting tool – easily checked with a simple hash total. There should be no inbound filters or transforms – save that stuff for the meta data and/or presentation layer.

How exactly does this relate to “design”?

I delight in obsessing over the details of layouts (screens, forms, & slides) and page formatting (specifically for the printed page) – possibly a bit too much, but it’s ultimately about user acceptance. If an application / report / presentation / document looks like it was thrown together, with extraneous messaging or ornamentation – well, people will use that as an excuse to write the piece off as complicated and/or incomplete. Often, when introducing new systems, tools, metrics, and/or processes, you are introducing significant change in people’s lives. There is always natural resistance to change – resistance that looks for anything to latch onto and call into question. Like rubbing a cotton ball over a rough surface – teeny imperfections will snag & fluff their attention, and distract from the view.

It’s much the same with my data mart example; these analytical wonders often expose uncomfortable truths or (more likely) opportunities that were there all along, just hidden from view. For the unbelievers, or those wishing to delay the [potentially] bad news, any excuse to question the validity and accuracy of the data will do. Do yourself a favor – a simple hash total proving that 100% of the data got from point A to point B helps limit the fingerpointing and focus debugging attention on a simpler set of scapegoats.

Change Manage the “Big Stuff”

Pay attention to the details of the design, how everything fits together – and obsess over the nits that will detract from the core message. This pays off big when nothing happens. Well, maybe nothing that you don’t want; communication with zero distractions lets you focus on the elephants in the room, where your change management energies will be best spent.

The design is successful when all the angsty conversation is about the new process you are introducing, the meaning behind the metrics – not the fact that the type is too small or the multiple fonts make something hard to read – or the numbers just don’t add up.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: agile, Art, Change Management, data architecture, data mart, data warehousing, debug, Design, details, elephant in the room, Execution, managing change, meta data, Mies van der Rohe, moose on the table, presentation layer, report presentation, usability, user interface

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/design-and-change-management/feed/ 1 http://www.cazh1.com/its-design-not-decorating/ http://www.cazh1.com/its-design-not-decorating/#comments Sat, 11 Sep 2010 02:14:09 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=866

Click to enlarge ...

A few months ago, I read Dan Pink‘s book, A Whole New Mind. Excellent stuff, with echoes in his video What Really Motivates Us? (check it out here), and it introduced me to the idea of “right mind thinking”. I’ve had a great respect for and interest in Architecture over the years, and have watched with great fascination (and a bit of jealousy) as my daughter progresses through her Interior Design studies at the University of Cincinnati (she’s the quote source for this post’s title, the designer of this blog’s logo, and I’ve even ripped a bit of one of her studio projects for an illustration).

As I read, watch, and listen as Erin talks about her passion and her projects, I’m also making connections to my professional experience and philosophies; it’s easy to write documents, develop applications, and create presentations, but it’s difficult (yet very impactful) to incorporate effective design into the finished product. However, much like Dan Pink’s observations on Abundance and the elevation of R-Directed Thinking, I see corporate IT groups feeling pressure to deliver technology that is fast and friendly like consumer tech, even though this is fundamentally in opposition to legacy corporate IT thinking.

Interior Design starts with a blank space, and figures out how to lay everything out to accomplish the objectives – living and working, following building codes and regulations, taking advantage of energy savings, etc. Easily said, but difficult to master; in IT, “design” is one of those annoying disciplines where written specifications are vague and problematic, merely acceptable results are faintly grating, and the best stuff is defined as “you’ll know it when you see it”.

This is not where IT likes to play – yet the same concepts apply to the design of compelling, impactful data visualizations, reports, web sites, etc. Are you taking a basic form layout and augmenting with the latest gadgets? Or are you mindfully thinking about layout of page, screen, data, and ink?

Design and IT

More to follow – I have a backlog of recommended reading and thought-provoking videos to pass along, courtesy of my RSS reader. But if this topic piques your interest, the best place to start is Dan Pink’s book – a quick read, and maybe the start of a fundamental change in your outlook.

That and a trip to the DAAP School of Design – ask for Erin, and prepare to be amazed.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: A Whole New Mind, architecture, Art, Bearcats, DAAP, Dan Pink, Design, effective design, Inspiration, studio projects, University of Cincinnati

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/its-design-not-decorating/feed/ 2 http://www.cazh1.com/sorting-with-sound/ http://www.cazh1.com/sorting-with-sound/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:31:48 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=826 via Geek.com – yes, I subscribe to stuff like this in my RSS reader …

I thought this was interesting on two levels …

• The Engineering student within appreciates the differences in sorting techniques (although I think I could speed up that bubble sort …)
• I also think these videos provide a simple illustration of the power of multi-media information sharing; the audio helps the animated “description” of the sorting techniques

I freely admit to be a bubble-sort bigot, as I never truly understood the heapsort algorithm. But think how this combination visualization / audio tool helps illustrate the concept; I’d love to see an interactive tool that lets me step through the sort and see the loops and the “stack” of values.

Another important power of effective visualizations – they get your audience thinking in new and different ways as well!

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: algorithms, Art, coder, communicating complexity, elegant, interesting stuff, multi-media information sharing, programming, Science, sort, sound, stack, subtlety, technical communication, video, visualization, YouTube

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/sorting-with-sound/feed/ 0 http://www.cazh1.com/the-sandpit/ http://www.cazh1.com/the-sandpit/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:24:05 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://www.cazh1.com/?p=555 (via GNC, thanks for this one!)

A bit of artistic inspiration; a visually stunning film, combining time-lapse and tilt-shift photography.

Click the picture to see the video ...

For the intellectually and technically curious – more information here.
For the artist and the observationally curious – tai chi under the freeway? Nice.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2010. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Art, cityscape, Inspiration, tilt-shift, time lapse, urban, video

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/the-sandpit/feed/ 0 http://www.cazh1.com/frustrating-paradox-simple-and-difficult/ http://www.cazh1.com/frustrating-paradox-simple-and-difficult/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:33:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=311 I think this is one of those fundamental concepts that, once it is pointed out to me, become self-evident and obvious (ie. why didn’t I think of that). I’m curious if other people agree …

I’ve seen these principles illustrated in different areas of business and technology; understanding this relationship can relieve frustration and provide hints on where to focus your efforts when working on a project.

Simple is Difficult

Simple Idea: My favorite example is the phenomenon of “smart part numbers“, where organizations find it convenient to encode attributes about a product in the item / SKU number. This makes it easy for people to read labels and reports, find parts in the warehouse, and work with line items on an order. Unfortunately, implementing systems & processes that rely on “smart part numbers” can be problematic; reports and queries rely on multiple pieces of information embedded in a single field / column; SQL queries are tough to write, and reports & other programs become notoriously difficult to maintain.

“Lean” Process: Somewhat related is the phenomenon where business processes are rarely documented. Everyone in the group knows how to start with the Order, through Make-to-Ship, and back to the Cash. The problem usually hits when we experience turnover or some other staff change; our well-oiled machine starts to slip up, and performance gaps appear as the new team member doesn’t fully understand know or understand everything that is required / assumed of them.

User Friendly: I’ve written before about documentation that insists on screen prints for every step of a process. I can empathize with the end-user on this; this level of hand-holding is extremely helpful, because it makes it easier to learn a new system or technique. Unfortunately, documentation at this depth is expensive and time-consuming to create & maintain – and is typically done best by folks whose primary job is documentation / communication (ie. not the folks who are asked to create this stuff).

Simple to Use; “Elegant”: There is a related demand for software and websites that are easy to use, truly user-friendly and possessing intuitively obvious interfaces that everyone can just run with. These don’t require complicated manuals, but they do require an awful lot of skillful programming to deliver such use and simplicity. I am working on a simple, small Web application (more on that later …), where I’m trying to develop something that will elegantly solve a specific problem, yet be truly intuitive and obvious (dare I say fun?) to use. The challenge, however, is cross-browser compatibility; in the past few evenings, I’ve discovered some amazingly intricate problems with how CSS and PNG works with the Microsoft browsers – and have had to go to extraordinary lengths to make the website look the same on Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

Difficult is Simple

The reverse argument can be behavioral and cynical; “time is money” drives some to oversimplify. However, “agile” design and development can be a practical tool when trying to maximize sustainable output.

Difficult Idea: I think the time-and attention-starved workday contributes to an unfortunate amount of oversimplification. If there is a complex project or difficult issue to deal with, get ready for the unending stream of peers, partners, subordinates, and “higher-ups” asking about status and root cause. Unfortunately, these people have limited time available to waste on active listening and understanding; typically, they will demand a short summary. They just want to know that the problem is in hand and getting handled.

Rapid Development: McConnell notwithstanding, some teams use “rapid development” as a convenient shorthand for “quick-and-dirty programming that relies on hard coding, flimsy structure, and a lack of testing”.

• With some extra work, reusable logic can be modularized, interfaces can be abstracted, and simplistic, utility programs can be replaced with flexible, fault tolerant modules that can be reused and extended. This particular brand of good cooking takes time, and a bit of design foresight.

Hard to Use; Hard to Understand:  Of course, if you focus on Time to Completion, driving to get stuff done, focusing on deadlines over quality, it’s not surprising that systems and processes are hard to use, and communication pieces are difficult to understand. As an old Army officer once told me, “if you want it bad, you get it bad”.

IT’s Challenge – Fighting the Good Fight

Of course, the “good cooking takes time” argument typically doesn’t go over well with most businesses. The pressure on IT, really any business area, is to learn the local tools and techniques, and leverage work that has been already done. In addition, there has to be some points awarded for systems that don’t require help desk support, processes that don’t require handholding, and follow-up training in the weeks after go live.

Communication with management and the business is just as critical, just as difficult and just as rewarding when you get it right. Your counterparts in the business aren’t dense – they just need things explained glibly yet completely. Master this, and Le monde est votre huître.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2009. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: agile, Art, communicating complexity, complex systems, CSS, Design, eating an elephant, elegant, Explorer, interfaces, Lean, markup, McConnell, Safari, subtlety, UI, usability

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/frustrating-paradox-simple-and-difficult/feed/ 0 http://www.cazh1.com/who-owns-master-data-in-your-company/ http://www.cazh1.com/who-owns-master-data-in-your-company/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 20:14:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=303 I’ve had to respond to this question, inside and outside of the company, in a number of different conversations over the past few days. It’s interesting, because this is one of those conversations where semantics mean a lot – what people say is just as important as what people don’t say. I only mean that people assume their listeners have precisely the same understanding of the concepts – which is often a mistake.

Case in point – who owns the Master Data? It seems obvious to many IT folks, having dealt with ERP and data warehousing in the past,  that the business owns the Master Data – it’s their business, right? Then why so often does the business look to IT to take the lead on cleansing / populating / defining / loading Master Data?

Business owns the Master Data

… they make the decisions on specifics. What should the next item number be? How should we structure the routings?  Who defines the standards for bin / storage location / building / plant / campus identifiers? What is the desired format for capturing customer street addresses consistently? How will we set up the chart of accounts?

The business knows that who and the why of Master Data.

On the other hand, and in most companies …

IT pwns the Master Data

Yes that is the correct spelling. For those who don’t know, it’s a hacker term; when I pwn the system, I have a root, I have a system admin access. I understand the technical underpinnings and details – I know how everything fits together. I know how to do anything I want with the system.

In Master Data terms – IT understands the data architecture and the interdependencies. They know all the transactions required to enter data into the system, and what security roles are in place to limit access to those transactions. IT also has tools and knowledge on how to extract data from the database and batch import data en masse.

IT knows the what, when, and how of Master Data.

What does that mean?

When an organization needs to get its Master Data in shape, it’s going to be a team effort between business and IT. The business must take the lead, making and clarifying decisions and driving the details. But IT absolutely needs to be right by their side, helping with the mechanics.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Art, chart of accounts, data architecture, data management, data warehousing, database, ERP, Execution, Master Data, ownership, pwn, SAP, Science, Supply Chain

All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/who-owns-master-data-in-your-company/feed/ 1