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Design checklist for perfect charts
- doctorpangloss 8y agoHere’s the real checklist: [ ] It is going up and to the right.
- fifnir 8y ago"analitycs" ?
- KineticLensman 8y ago"Expences" ?
- _fourzerofour 8y agoI think it's safe to say these are concepts best expressed via charts for the author. Sarcasm aside, this is a great opportunity to bring up the work of Bret Victor again. Specifically, pushing the boundaries of how we're communicating fundamental concepts with intelligent design - it was a real eye opener for me seeing ideas that were on the verge of nonsensical in a medium (say, English) expressed effortlessly in another. I know it comes up here often but frankly it's something that everyone should be aware of.
- devchix 8y agoIndeed. I recently learned of his work on HN, and have been carrying his Magic Ink paper around for 2 weeks, nibbling on it bit by bit. This was written in 2006! I see implementations of the ideas expressed everywhere - for example Netflix's "Recommended" list. Although, a nit. I once bought a bunch of fairy tale books on Amazon. For months after that I was recommended nothing but more fairy tales. It's not counter-intuitive to think that if I bought 10 things of the same kind, I may not want to buy any more of that thing for a while. I think the paper called this last-value predictor, and clearly for a subset of decisions, this predictor is maladaptive.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoOlde Anglish, mayhap?
- mathie25 8y agoFirst item of a Design checklist: Don't use pie charts
- bluetidepro 8y agoWhy?
- mathie25 8y agoThere are multiples reasons to not use a pie/donut chart as it does not (most of the time) help to better understand the information presented. Edward Tufte and Stephen Few (both experts in data visualization) have given multiple arguments against pie charts. See the link for a good summary on the subject https://priceonomics.com/should-you-ever-use-a-pie-chart/ https://priceonomics.com/should-you-ever-use-a-pie-chart/
- seanwilson 8y agoYou'd never use a pie chart? What if it's just more visually pleasing to the rest of your page design and you only want to convey roughly how say 3 data values compare in size?
- aloisdg 8y agoYou can use a bar chart
- com2kid 8y agoThey may be visually pleasing, but humans just cannot process angular magnitudes at a granular level. A bar chart where one bar is 25% larger than another is obvious, a pie chart with the same is not obvious. Numeric labels are needed, because the chart itself does not serve as a useful visual reference. It may look nice, but it does no good. Especially once you have more than a handful of values!
- seanwilson 8y ago
- alexpetralia 8y agoThe amount of sarcasm in this thread already is really endearing.
- jrd259 8y agoSee instead Tufte, Edward: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (and the followup books) Few, Stephen: Information Dashboard Design
- patrickcteng 8y agoI'd like to add that Wall Street Journal's Guide to Informational Graphics is a great one too.
- Numberwang 8y agoTufte is a horrible choice. The link by the submitter is much more useful and elegant.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoPeculiar list. Some points are good (e.g. 6, 7, 8), but overall this list has a different definition of "perfect" than expected. It's not about designing a chart that facilitates insight in the best possible way; it's about making a chart as a vehicle of parting users from their money/time (e.g. 3, 17), with particular focus on charts in mobile sites/applications. As per 'jrd259, if you want to design chart that maximizes value provided to the user, read Tufte instead.
- antisthenes 8y agoHorrible freezing on Firefox. Please fix your site. Not sure why it loads the same recaptcha.js file 6 times or what exactly requires 200kb of CSS here, but there it is.