posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 2:05 PM
by
Jonathan Hodgson
Lightweight Data Visualization
Edward Tutfe's Sparklines are a simple but effective way to convey information. Compare just the text "glucose 128" with a small diagram showing historic trends, normal bands and comparison between other factors.
It seems a number of companies also like the idea, with
Bissantz producing SparkFonts and SparkMaker,
BonaVista Systems with MicroCharts and also the free
PHP Sparkline library.
Another lightweight data visualization technique is doing
'in-cell' graphing in Excel.
In the forecoming Excel 2007, we have
databars and iconsets, and we'll most likely see
ProClarity features (recently bought by Microsoft) move into a combination of Excel,
Sql Server Analysis Services/Business Intelligence and
SharePoint via PerformancePoint in the coming product releases.