Data Presentation and Visualization Methods

Why better data presentation and visualization methods are crucial?

Organizations around the world are investing heavily in Big Data with lots of research in finding new ways to store and analyze big data. All this, so that the decision maker can make an informed decision using the available data.

But what if the decision maker/user is overwhelmed with the data. What if he/she cannot understand it? In such a case, all the efforts, time and  financial resources used to analyze the data go in vain. Hence organizations need to also invest sufficiently in that last mile, Data presentation! With proper, easy to understand and yet comprehensive data visualization technique, one can take actions based on the understandable insights. To prove my case, I have selected three business vignettes to provide recommendation for optimal methods of presentation of data from that line of business.

TELECOMMUNICATION INDUSTRY

Picture credit: http://citizensutilityboard.org/CellphoneShoppersGuide.htm

Consider a fictitious telephone bill like the one shown in the adjacent picture. As easy it may seem, it is actually a little confusing for an average reader (Yes, telephones are used by children as well as senior citizens). The problem with this bill is that there is too much text involved and it is a pain to the eye (apart from the total amount due of course). So how can we improve this? Moreover, how comprehensive can it be made. 

Recommendation: Visualize the story

Picture Credit: http://www.helenzhou.me/bill/

The adjacent phone bill beautifully visualizes the phone bill and gives insights about 

services exhausted and also about pending services. It gives you a good overview about the distribution of calls, data and messages throughout the billing month. Moreover it also provides insights about the daily average calls, data and messages.

FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY

Ever happened to work with stock spreadsheets with gazillions of data consisting of plain numbers?

It is not only time consuming to get some value out of this type of data but there are good chances of making errors while trying to get some valuable insights from such a sheet.

Picture Credit: Investexcel.net

 Recommendation: Summarize the data using data visualization

Picture Credit: KendoUI

By summarizing the data using data visualization, it becomes easier to take action on the information based on the valuable insights.  It also becomes easier to do a comparative analysis as seen from the picture here. Moreover, human error rate is also drastically decreased while extracting information out of such a data visualization as compared to the raw excel data shown in the earlier example.

E-COMMERCE INDUSTRY

Picture Credit: Visible Technologies

The above picture shows the number of posts in social media regarding shopping from a fortnight before thanksgiving till the period after cyber monday. It is a simple x vs y plotting and it is not difficult to extract information out of it. But can we make it more better? Absolutely yes!

Recommendation: Categorize data

Picture Credit: Visible Technologies

In the preceding graph, the x and y labels are clearly marked with data about the day of Thanksgiving, cyber monday etc. rather on marking directly on the graph as done in the previous picture. Moreover the data is categorized clearly indicating the buildup time, the peak time, the lull and the 2nd wind. 

References

http://data-informed.com/data-visualizations