I have a problem with David McCandless of Information is Beautiful.  From his own website he says:

A passion of mine is visualizing information – facts, data, ideas, subjects, issues, statistics, questions – all with the minimum of words.

I’m interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath. Or, failing that, it can just look cool!

So let’s look at a couple of these statements in the context of his latest infographic. 

Has David met any of his own criteria?  Let’s check.

1. Minimum of words – No! All this infographic contains is words…horrible!
2. Facts – Maybe. If you consider a bunch of words facts, then I guess he meets this criteria.
3. Data – No, not even close
4. Ideas – No, nothing that I can see
5. Can help us understand – No, not for me
6. Reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories – No, absolutely not!
7. It can just look cool – Seriously?

To summarize, this is one of the worst infographics I’ve EVER seen.  Shouldn’t we expect better from an “expert”?  It’s impossible to gleam even the slightest bit of insight or data outside two things: nationality and that the album falls somewhere in the top 21. 

How am I supposed to deduce the rank?  The size?  The width? The font? The location?  I have no idea and no one else will likely know either.  Throw me a bone and at least give me some type of instructions for making sense of this mess.

And another thing.  Why the top 21?  At first, I thought the list only went to 21, but Metacritic.com lists the top 30.  And four albums are tied for 20th.  The top 21 makes no sense whatsoever!  Maybe David likes blackjack?

Let’s consider the definition of an infographic from Wikipedia (not the defining source, I know).  I’ve bolded what I consider the key points.

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly.

Did David meet any of these criteria?

1. Graphic visual representation – No, he merely created a wordle.
2. Present complex information quickly and clearly – No. I can’t garner any insights quickly and clearly.  Can you?

Ok, you can tell that I think his work is a totally useless mess.  But how would I present the data to allow for quick and clear insights?  I’d use Tableau.

My viz may not be an “infographic” in its purest sense since it doesn’t have all of the cute pictures, figurines, and unnecessary clutter, but I have met David’s criteria, the criteria for an infographic, plus much more.

1. Graphic visual representation – Check
2. Present complex information quickly and clearly – Check
3. Minimum of words – Check
4. Facts – Check
5. Data – Check
6. Ideas – Check 
7. Can help us understand – Check
8. Reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories – Check
9. It can just look cool – Check

But Tableau let’s you go above and beyond.

• Interact with the filters and highlighting
• Change the Points Type
• Filter and/or highlight nationalities
• The data is ALWAYS ranked based on the selections you make

I’m sick and tired and tired and sick of seeing useless infographics like this one.  I won’t keep my finger crossed that they’re going away anytime soon though.

While reading an article on Sports Chart of the Day, a cute little gauge on the right sidebar titled “The Engage-O-Meter” caught my eye. Naturally I clicked on it (which must mean they did something correct with its placement).  The gauge directs you to a chartbeat.com dashboard that’s capturing real-time site traffic for businessinsider.com. 

The amount of information on the page is impressive, overwhelming and disorganized.  Two pieces of the dashboard confused my straight away (and they’re the only two sections of the dashboard you see when the screen first appears because there’s so much spaced used at the top for basically nothing). 

Let’s dissect these two charts/graphs.

What mistakes have been made?

1. It takes up way too much space on the dashboard.  There’s a ton of white space in this one chart alone.
2. The active visits number could be represented as just that, a number.  The gauge isn’t necessary and doesn’t add any value.
3. The new & returning users are difficult to interpret.  Why do the numbers need to be so precise?  Would a relative measure, like % of total, be more appropriate?

I would present this information in a table. Ultimately we’re simply “looking up” the data, which lends well to a table.  We’re not attempting to determine any trends, which is what charts do well.

Onto the second chart.

What could be improved?  What’s confusing?

1. This “Top Pages” section, is merely a list of the top pages and their respective number of active visits.  Why not a simple list?
2. Do the circles add any value?  To me they don’t.  Each circle represents 10 active users, but the layout of the circles doesn’t make sense.  If you count across, there are 19 columns.  Why not 20?  That’d at least make it easier to estimate the totals.
3. If you multiply the number of circles by 10 in each section, you don’t get the same total as represented by the number itself.
4. I believe, but can’t substantiate, that they’re making this similar to a Merimekko chart, which is a chart that encodes two variables: one for height and one for width.  I don’t see why this would be necessary at all.

Maybe representing all of the data as a bar chart would be better. 

In the end, with these two simple changes, I’ve been able to save a ton of space.  The rest of their dashboard could be reworked as well and maybe it’d all fit into one nice window.