Change Over Time: timelines in motion

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

timelines in motion

A nice example of timelines in motion accompanied by an audio track from Brad Delong.

The combination of a timeline change in motion and a guided audio track is powerful.

To make this even better, I would have liked it to zip along at a faster pace and it would be great to have a higher resolution graphic quality so that the X and Y axes could be more readily examined and understood.

You won't be surprised to hear me saying that making the data available in a readily re-usable format would sweeten things even further.

Providing a mechanism similar to gapminder to be able to watch this change over time with the viewer in control of the speed would be even better.

What do you think?

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Trend Visualization Principles

1. Context Comes First. Ask all the subject matter experts: What are the most important factors? What's missing? What other factors must you include?

2.Create a History. Measure, record and archive a trend history of every important factor. For best results, measure at a relatively high frequency.

3. Look at ALL the Data. Once you have a history of the most important factors, you'll find charts with but a single variable will tell a powerful story all by themselves. Avoid beginning with the most complicated, most cluttered charts before you have established a good context by actually looking at each important factor on its own.

4. Share ALL Your Data. When you publish a chart, share the readily reusable data with the chart. Include the entire time range of the data you analyzed even if the charts you presented use a shorter interval.

5. Explain Your Calculations whenever you recombine or normalize your data; document your sources.

6. Show Your Thinking. Place explanatory text for your findings in close physical proximity to the your published trend charts. Data + Charts + Text creates a full package that encourages further conversation.

7. Insure Readability. Make sure the axes and titles and other text graphics are easily readable.

What principles do you see as contributing most to improved understanding and enhanced collaboration?

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