Week 11

Couldn't attend the Week 10 lecture due to bad health but did see POD's lecture material and got the message which he wanted to convey -

It's the Interface Stupid!

Apparently, Interfaces don't get much attention in BIA world and are often neglected by vendors.
Pivot tables are most popular but people find them complex and not apt for many situations.

Tufte's Good visualisations rules emphasise upon- Simplification of reports which shows data and not complex aggregations; data presented should be comparable.

Learnt about few tips from Fres and Miller (1998) about Interface design like choosing appropriate charts (Ignore Pie Charts), consistent layout and colours, right kind of scale, 3D's to be used only when really needed(read Never!) and honesty and integrity(Moral science lessons suggesting not to cook data up!!)

Ehrenberg's has focused on the objective of the presentation to be either telling a 'story' or for records. He has suggested few rules for presentation of data like rounding off to significant digits; use of row and column averages to help understand whether its up or down; comparison is easier in columns(to be used to decide the display of data); row and columns should be ordered by size; figures which need to be compared should be placed side by side (avoid grid lines); use of figure to compare data.  Also, colour need to be effectively used.

Also learnt some tips for report designing and Interface design. Neilson suggested testing of BIA by analysing if the users are using the system the way we designed it and also that a review exercise should be done every Quarter is possible.

Just realised how useful the screenr links from POD are, specially for assignments. Got a few tips by viewing last year's assignment related help. Edward Tufte developed a tool called Sparklines which can be attached with Excel( I am gonna try it for sure).

So, yeah it's the Interface stupid!


P.S - Thanks POD for ur GIFT of extension of ** days :)