Day 3 Week 4 of the CORTEX MBAnalytics

Welcome to week 4 - part of the 60 day information management refresher course from the CORTEX.

The CORTEX

Master of Business Analytics

Week 4, Day 3

Theme: Data Visualisation

Week 4, Wednesday

This week's theme is data visualisation, or perhaps more accurately, transforming data into insight. 

READ      Today's task:  MagicInk   2.8Mb

2 hours

'Magic Ink - INFORMATION SOFTWARE AND THE GRAPHICAL INTERFACE' by Bret Victor, 2006. Available online here and his cv is here.

Key takeout: This tour de force introduces a “unified theory” of information graphic (user interface) design. The author argues that information software design should be seen as the design of context-sensitive information graphics. A warning: this paper may be heavy going for some as it is a tightly woven ball of original thought and has been very carefully constructed to present a complex new theory. A theory that has ramifications for the design (purpose?) of all analytic software. To call it thought provoking is an understatement. In a nutshell the theory states that:   

1. Graphic design (user interface) is of paramount importance because you are asking for software to display a complex set of data in a way that you can understand the data and reason about what it means.

2. Context-sensitivity is of value because software breaks out of the confines of print and can uniquely:

• "infer the context in which its data is needed,

• winnow the data to exclude the irrelevant, and

• generate a graphic which directly addresses the present needs".

3. Interactivity - should be minimised as information software "mimics the experience of reading, not working. It is used for achieving an understanding—constructing a model within the mind. Thus, the user must listen to the software and think about what it says… but any manipulation happens mentally".

As always, comments, questions and ideas are all welcome. 

The MBAnalytics is just one part of the Business Intelligence CORTEX - a community of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Analytics and Project Management professionals in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Membership is free and the forums are very active with over 20,000 posts offering a uniquely Australasian viewpoint.

Comments

[Pranali]

Dear Andy et al,I love the idea of timecoding inmaifotron to the video. However, from what I've seen so far I would actually prefer simple 2D appearances next to the video so I can see everything at once, like ads. It is a bummer to have to stop the video to navigate through the other materials, and I think it would be great to embed the webpages in frames so you don't have to navigate away from the video to read them. I am still looking forward to seeing the advantage of 3D navigation over 2D.