Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
http://www.breathingearth.net/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Angel, I must be experiencing Saturday night blinker-vision, but I don't see the sparklines in that site. Where are they? Steve 2009/1/24 Angel Marquez angel.marq...@gmail.com http://www.breathingearth.net/ -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: steveb...@meld.com.au | Twitter: docbaty | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevebaty Blog: http://docholdsfourth.blogspot.com Contributor - UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Here is another neat example. This is a coupon site that shows stats on how successful the coupon was. This is a nice feature since even though a coupon has a 90% success rate, the unsuccessful attempts at using the coupon could either be evenly dispersed or all at the end. This can give you a good idea of how likely it is that it will work - if all of them are at the end, it probably has expired. http://www.retailmenot.com/view/amazon.com On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Elise Edson elise.ed...@gmail.com wrote: Hi IxDAers... just thought I'd share this neat example of sparklines! I was looking for pet travel information across the various airlines, and I was surprised/delighted to see this: http://www.petflight.com/pet-incidents/airlines How have you integrated sparklines into your designs? Elise Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
A sparkline is good in that it can convey a number of pieces of information that show a larger trend. This kind of data, however, does not warrant a trend because there's not enough data to analyze. Tell me that the data covers 4 years and allow me to sort by count. The reason a sparkline isn't effective here is because I do not see any trends or patterns. Either the airline is doing a good job or a bad job. I cannot see that it's gotten worse or better for the airline. There needs to be a few more years of data to work with in order to start seeing trends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36598 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Whilst I have used them in Excel reports on metrics (Bissantz Sparklines plugin) I was (coincidentally) struck by this piece of information design yesterday when browsing a flickr set. The use of sparklines here also demonstrates issues with scale though - as I believe Tutfte points out - scale is less important than trends with this kind of data. http://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/393271975/sizes/o/in/pool-575...@n25/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36598 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Hi IxDAers... just thought I'd share this neat example of sparklines! I was looking for pet travel information across the various airlines, and I was surprised/delighted to see this: http://www.petflight.com/pet-incidents/airlines How have you integrated sparklines into your designs? Elise Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Excellent! I'm always on the hunt for live examples of good information presentation. Thanks for sharing :-) I use sparklines for presentations on metrics-based recommendations, site SEO reporting, etc. The response has been very positive every time, and the biggest compliment of all -- others have begun to do the same :-) Alex -- The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now. On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Elise Edson elise.ed...@gmail.com wrote: Hi IxDAers... just thought I'd share this neat example of sparklines! I was looking for pet travel information across the various airlines, and I was surprised/delighted to see this: http://www.petflight.com/pet-incidents/airlines How have you integrated sparklines into your designs? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Looking at the Pet Flight site, I wonder if the lack of scale/context is problematic. I know I was a bit shocked at all of the peaks in the graphs when I saw them. Not knowing the scale of either axis leaves me to make assumptions about the data. In this case, I would assume American Airlines is going to kill my cat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36598 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Agreed, context and scale are important, and breaking out lost, injured, killed as three separate information vectors by airline, overtime without connecting the information points would have increased information density while reducing chart junk. ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.1281 | w...@semanticfoundry.com aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill skype: semanticwill - On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Jackson Fox jackson...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at the Pet Flight site, I wonder if the lack of scale/context is problematic. I know I was a bit shocked at all of the peaks in the graphs when I saw them. Not knowing the scale of either axis leaves me to make assumptions about the data. In this case, I would assume American Airlines is going to kill my cat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36598 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Hi, appreciate the reminder of this application. I attended Tufte's presentation in Chicago probably about 10 years ago. It was one of the best presentations/seminars I have ever attended. I bought all his books and really enjoy them. I am not sure, but sparklines seems like it might have stemmed from his work with Multiples in Space and Time which is a chapter in his book Visual Explanations. In this chapter he has a graphical summary of a patient status (pg 111). What is really fascinating about this graphic is how they time align specific dosages, blood levels, chemical levels, etc. This page is a collection of small graphs for each of these items. Thus as Tufte explained it, instead of a group of doctors and medical professionals trying to review a patient's status via a 1 thick stack of charts and test results, they have a 1-sheet page which can give them an instant summary of the status.This approach allows for mind-based data mining to see patterns and trends, etc. And it of course can be applied to many other areas. If you have not looked at this, I'd recommend it. Its a well source of ideas for new applications. Sparklines reminded me of this talk and it also reminded me of earthquake seismic measurement data. One caution I would add to sites like petflight.com when reporting this type of data would be to normalize it based on number of pet flights vs. injuries. It wasn't clear to me that it was done. Airlines like American and United will most likely have far more pets flying on them vs. smaller airlines. We all know that you have to be very careful when you present data, I see abuses in the news print all them time on how they report a story with stats. But perhaps I missed that and its already in the data presentation. best, 'mark Alexandra O'Neal wrote: Excellent! I'm always on the hunt for live examples of good information presentation. Thanks for sharing :-) I use sparklines for presentations on metrics-based recommendations, site SEO reporting, etc. The response has been very positive every time, and the biggest compliment of all -- others have begun to do the same :-) Alex -- The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now. On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Elise Edson elise.ed...@gmail.com wrote: Hi IxDAers... just thought I'd share this neat example of sparklines! I was looking for pet travel information across the various airlines, and I was surprised/delighted to see this: http://www.petflight.com/pet-incidents/airlines How have you integrated sparklines into your designs? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
I'm in agreement with Will, here. The sparklines on this site don't provide enough context to be of any use. They raise a lot of questions! 1. What is the time-span we are looking at? 2. As Will pointed out, they haven't broken out losses, injuries, and deaths, which are very different things. If you are a pet owner, a death is final. An injury is likely mendable, and a loss may only be temporary. 3. Obviously, a peak represents 1 incident, but each peak covers a certain span of time. If you look at ATA, which shows 2 incidents in a single peak with a flat top, and Atlantic Southeast, which shows 1 incident with a pointed peak, the time-span only differs by 2 pixels. Granted, I don't know the time scale, but it seems to me the width of a peak is inaccurate in comparison. 4. What does height of a peak represent? Judging by the airlines with only a few incidents, it has nothing to do with the amount within a single time unit, as they have full-height peaks. Midwest reports 4 incidents, but there are only three peaks, two of which are half- height, and one of which is full height. Then look at Continental with 52 incidents. Its sparkline varies in height quite a bit. This leads me to believe that height is supposed to correlate to the number of incidents, but the scale is being changed for each sparkline to make them fit the given height. If such is the case, no meaningful comparison can be made between them. They may as well just give the totals and leave it at that. Will Evans said: Agreed, context and scale are important, and breaking out lost, injured, killed as three separate information vectors by airline, overtime without connecting the information points would have increased information density while reducing chart junk. Actually, Will, chart junk refers to graphics that aren't communicating data. A sparkline, by definition, is all data. There is no chart junk. So, breaking out each into a separate vector will increase the information, but not reduce chart junk. Whether or not it increases information density depends on how much space is used, of course. If they are overlaid in the same space, then yes, it would increase data density. Best, Jack Jack L. Moffett Interaction Designer inmedius 412.459.0310 x219 http://www.inmedius.com There is no good design that is not based on the understanding of people. - Stefano Marzano CEO of Philips Design Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Neat use of Tufte's sparklines: Airline pet incidents
Given this was posted to the list today, I find it ironical that Jetblue sent me a link to this site today *JetPaws* http://www.jetblue.com/jetpaws/?source=EMJetpawsAnnounce_mainsp_mid=1318246 On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 2:52 PM, Jack Moffett jackmoff...@mac.com wrote: I'm in agreement with Will, here. The sparklines on this site don't provide enough context to be of any use. They raise a lot of questions! 1. What is the time-span we are looking at? 2. As Will pointed out, they haven't broken out losses, injuries, and deaths, which are very different things. If you are a pet owner, a death is final. An injury is likely mendable, and a loss may only be temporary. 3. Obviously, a peak represents 1 incident, but each peak covers a certain span of time. If you look at ATA, which shows 2 incidents in a single peak with a flat top, and Atlantic Southeast, which shows 1 incident with a pointed peak, the time-span only differs by 2 pixels. Granted, I don't know the time scale, but it seems to me the width of a peak is inaccurate in comparison. 4. What does height of a peak represent? Judging by the airlines with only a few incidents, it has nothing to do with the amount within a single time unit, as they have full-height peaks. Midwest reports 4 incidents, but there are only three peaks, two of which are half-height, and one of which is full height. Then look at Continental with 52 incidents. Its sparkline varies in height quite a bit. This leads me to believe that height is supposed to correlate to the number of incidents, but the scale is being changed for each sparkline to make them fit the given height. If such is the case, no meaningful comparison can be made between them. They may as well just give the totals and leave it at that. Will Evans said: Agreed, context and scale are important, and breaking out lost, injured, killed as three separate information vectors by airline, overtime without connecting the information points would have increased information density while reducing chart junk. Actually, Will, chart junk refers to graphics that aren't communicating data. A sparkline, by definition, is all data. There is no chart junk. So, breaking out each into a separate vector will increase the information, but not reduce chart junk. Whether or not it increases information density depends on how much space is used, of course. If they are overlaid in the same space, then yes, it would increase data density. Best, Jack Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
