Mary Beth Raven: Finding the Balance Between too much and not enough information
by francie tanner :: information management overload ui design
Today’s world is filled with an ever growing about of information to be processed.
How do you determine what to focus on and what to tune out?
How do you best organize this information to persuade your management team to make purchases or agree to de-commissioning of certain hardware or software?
These were two of several questions that Florian Vogler and I discussed with attendees at a "Birds of a Feather" (BOF) session during Lotusphere 2012. Our discussion included agreement that the data is, well, just data, without two other important pieces of information:
- The PURPOSE of collecting or analyzing the data.
- The AUDIENCE for the data analysis.
If the information you are collecting does not help achieve your purposes - ignore it. If the data you are collecting will not be meaningful to your audience, do not include it.
Given my job as a UI designer for collaboration and social media, I try to think of ways to help business end users see relationships (for example, with email messages, with each other) and with Composition - (for example, the content of emails, blog posts). Florian, on the other hand, as a provider of client and server analysis tools, tries to think of ways to help administrators see comparisons ( for example, space before and after compression) and distributions (for example,network topology visualizations). Thus, we focused on 4 different things to show when providing information/data analysis:
Relationship
Composition
Comparison
Distribution
What you want to show should determine whether you use charts at all, and what type of chart to use. Here are some common chart types based on what you want to show:
Relationship: Histogram, scatter chart (For social network analysis, there are new types of relationship maps being designed as well)
Composition: Pie charts are probably most common, but new visualizations like Tag clouds and Wordle are emerging
Comparison: Side by side bara charts and column charts are the norm
Distribution: Histograms and scatter charts have been common, and panagenda has provided an interactive topology map in their Green Light product.
Amit Agarwal has provided a nice visualization of what type of chart to use and when (although it does not include tag clouds, Wordle or a topology map). Go here to check out the larger format.
We didn't solve all of our information overload problems during the BOF, but we shared some really good ideas, and left thinking about how to create new and different ways to filter, analyze, and display all this information.
How do you deal with the every day bombardement of information, both in your professional and personal lives? Do you turn your mobile device off at a certain time? Are you on a mission to "unfollow" digital input?
- Mary Beth Raven
- The PURPOSE of collecting or analyzing the data.
- The AUDIENCE for the data analysis.
If the information you are collecting does not help achieve your purposes - ignore it. If the data you are collecting will not be meaningful to your audience, do not include it.
Given my job as a UI designer for collaboration and social media, I try to think of ways to help business end users see relationships (for example, with email messages, with each other) and with Composition - (for example, the content of emails, blog posts). Florian, on the other hand, as a provider of client and server analysis tools, tries to think of ways to help administrators see comparisons ( for example, space before and after compression) and distributions (for example,network topology visualizations). Thus, we focused on 4 different things to show when providing information/data analysis:
Relationship
Composition
Comparison
Distribution
What you want to show should determine whether you use charts at all, and what type of chart to use. Here are some common chart types based on what you want to show:
Relationship: Histogram, scatter chart (For social network analysis, there are new types of relationship maps being designed as well)
Composition: Pie charts are probably most common, but new visualizations like Tag clouds and Wordle are emerging
Comparison: Side by side bara charts and column charts are the norm
Distribution: Histograms and scatter charts have been common, and panagenda has provided an interactive topology map in their Green Light product.
Amit Agarwal has provided a nice visualization of what type of chart to use and when (although it does not include tag clouds, Wordle or a topology map). Go here to check out the larger format.
We didn't solve all of our information overload problems during the BOF, but we shared some really good ideas, and left thinking about how to create new and different ways to filter, analyze, and display all this information.
How do you deal with the every day bombardement of information, both in your professional and personal lives? Do you turn your mobile device off at a certain time? Are you on a mission to "unfollow" digital input?
- Mary Beth Raven
Just a quick post to express our gratitude.... thank each and every one of you that stopped by our booth last week at
Pic courtesy of
Greetings fellow Geeks!
For those of you that missed it, we had another Demonar with the folks from NotesCode.net last week, this time on MarvelClient Analyze "The Value of Transparency". Attendees from all over the World learned why it's so important that you "see" your Notes environment, and they even got a FREE MarvelClient Analyze license for taking part.