Business Reporting, Visual Analytics & Dashboards

Business Reporting, Visual Analytics & Dashboards

1. Business Reporting

   • Purpose: improve managerial decisions
   • Source: inside and outside the organization
   • Format: Text + tables + charts/graphs
   • Distribution: in-print, email, portal/intranet
   • Good report
     • Clear
     • Brevity
     • Completeness
     • Correctness
   • have many functions

2. Types of business report

   • Metric Management Reports
   • Dashboard-type Reports
   • Balanced Scorecard-Type Reports

3. Visual Analytics

   • Information Visualization + Predictive Analysis

4. Dashboards

   • provides visual displays of important information that is consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that information can be digested at a single glance and easily drilled in and further explored.
   • why dashboards?
     • small
     • concise
     • clear
     • intuitive display
     • customizable
   • Performance Dashboards
     • Reduce non-data pixels
       • eliminate unnecessary non-data pixels
         • Variations in colors
         • unnecessary borders around graph
         • unnecessary fill colors
           • bars
           • background
         • 3D
         • gridlines
       • De-emphasize and regularize the non-data pixels that remain
         • mute grid lines and axis lines
         • Minimize lines, borders and fill colors
         • navigation controls should not take up more space than usual display
         • instructions
     • Enhance Data Pixels
       • Eliminate all unnecessary data pixels
         • summarise and exceptions
         • recent data > past data
       • Highlight the most important data pixels that remain
         • always important: use static means
         • most important at the moment: use dynamic means
       • highlight most important data:
         • top left
         • center
     • What to look for?
       • visuals to highlight important things
       • user-friendly and requires little coding to implement, deploy and maintain
       • integration and interactions of data
       • real-time and dynamic
   • Types
     • Strategic (Managing)
     • Analytical (Analysis)
     • Operational (Monitoring)
   • Principles of Designing
     • Include only information that is needed
     • Condense information
     • Customizable for audience and objective
     • use visual display - easy reading and understanding
   • Components
     • Display Media
       • Graphs
         • Basic Charts and Graphs
           • Line Chart
           • Bar Chart
             • stacked bar /column graph
           • Pie Chart
           • Scatter Plot
           • Bubble Chart
         • Specialized Charts and Graphs
           • Histogram
           • Gantt Chart
           • PERT chart
           • Geographic Map
           • Bullet Graph
           • Heat Map/Tree Map
           • Highlight Table
       • Images
       • Icons
       • Drawing Objects
       • Text
       • Organizers
     • Navigation and Container Components
     • Selector Components
       • Radio Button
       • Combo Box
     • Alerts
   • Use organizers
   • Using colours appropriately.
   • Organize information to support its meaning and use
   • Expression of Data
     • time
     • comparison
     • Evaluation
     • non-quantitative dashboard data

5. Layers of Information

   • Top Layer (Summarized Graphical View)
   • Middle Layer (Multidimensional View)
   • Bottom Layer (Detailed Reporting View)

6. Visual Perception in Pre-attentive Processing

   • Color
     • Hue
     • Instensity
   • Form
     • orientation
     • Line Length
     • Line Width
     • Size
     • Shape
     • Added Marks
     • Enclosure
   • Position
     • 2-D Location
   • Motion

7. Effective Dashboard Display Media

   • text?
   • graph?
   • text and graph?

8. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

   • Principles of Proximity
   • Principles of Closure
   • Principles of Similarity
   • Principles of Enclosure
   • Principles of Connection
   • Principles of Continuity