Many Eyes Line Chart
Monday, November 26th, 2007Posts in this series:
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Bar vs. Line Chart Part 5 - Many Eyes Version
Below is the original stacked bar chart that GE used in their 2006 annual report. There are many reasons that I found this chart to be ineffective and can be found here.
The line graph below is my preference for viewing the data that GE displayed in its stacked bar chart. My version allows the reader to see how each business segment changed over the five years. Also, the reader can see how much each segment makes up of the total revenue. For more reasons why this is a better choice, click here to review the earlier post.
There has been nothing new so far. The goal of this post is to discuss a new version of the same data using Many Eyes. This website is somewhat of new (last few years) development where any user can upload and share their data visualization. This site allows many people the opportunity to share unique visualizations that you previously would not have available. Martin & Fernanda, both part of the IBM Visual Communication Lab, are the ones to thank for this endeavor. The following quote is their description of the vision for Many Eyes, “To democratize visualization, we have built Many Eyes, a web site where people can upload their data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on conversations”.
The chart below is a version of GE’s data using the Many Eyes website. Their version, using a line chart, came out okay. It does allow a nice interactive option where the reader can select which segments to display on the chart. Basically, the results are the same as using Excel, except for some minor formatting changes I made, which were not an option in Many Eyes. Some formatting changes would be a nice enhancement to their functionality. But, I know that you can’t have it all… The point of their site isn’t to fine-tune a chart down to the utmost detail. Their goal is to allow collaboration and sharing of ideas and visualizations, which they do quite well! I found their site very user friendly and intuitive.
Another Many Eyes feature that I found very useful is the Visualization Types section. This page lists all of the visualization types available through their site along with how that option works, data requirements for uploading, and other insightful notes. Another powerful option they have is the ability to visualize data using an interactive map display. Some additional options are: World Maps, Country Maps, Scatterplots, Network Diagrams, Treemaps, Tag Clouds, and Word Trees.
I would highly recommend visiting their site!
