Bill Morein's Weblog : Data Visualization

(Relatively) New blog with lots of great Visio content

wmorein — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:51:00 GMT

Somehow I had thought that I had already pointed people to Saveen Reddy's blog, but looking back through the archives I realized that I hadn't. Saveen doesn't work on the Visio team, but is a power user and knows a ton about visualization.

I'm a huge fan of Python the programming language, and he covers a lot of information on how to use Python with Visio, among other topics. Here is a recent series he started: http://blogs.msdn.com/saveenr/archive/2009/01/22/visio-ironpython-powershell-how-to-draw-nice-diagrams-from-the-command-line.aspx

Top 5 Visualizations of 2008

wmorein — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:28:00 GMT

For those more generally interested in Data Visualization, this is an interesting post: http://flowingdata.com/2008/12/19/5-best-data-visualization-projects-of-the-year/

More breakdowns of visualization techniques

wmorein — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:48:00 GMT

Coding Horror has a good post summarizing a number of breakdowns similar to the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods that I covered in an earlier post.

Upcoming webcast

wmorein — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:18:00 GMT

I'll be presenting a webcast on the Data Visualization features in Visio on Tuesday, August 7th. Here is a link to the details and registration information.

New book -- Visualizing Information with Visio 2007

wmorein — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:58:00 GMT

Somehow I missed the fact that Visualizing Information with Microsoft Office Visio 2007, a new book by David Parker, has been published. I knew that the book was coming out, but somehow the actual release slipped by me. I've had a number of people ask about good books for learning about real world uses of the new data features in Visio 2007, and I highly recommend this book for that reason.

David is one of our most active and insightful MVPs, and he has written a great book that comprehensively covers how to work with data in Visio. One of the best things about the book is that it not only covers the new features, but also has a lot of tips about how to best incorporate earlier product features into your overall solution.

Interesting Visualization examples - mostly treemaps

wmorein — Tue, 15 May 2007 18:47:00 GMT

I missed this last year when it came out, but this blog post (an outgrowth of this WSJ article) provides a link to a whole series of examples of interesting visualizations on the web. They are mostly variants of treemaps, but there are some really interesting ones out there.

Interesting blog covering visualization of BI data

wmorein — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:14:00 GMT

Sam Batterman, a BI Evangelist here at Microsoft, writes a great blog ("Samb Business Intelligence Blog") that is heavily focused on visualization of BI data. I've been meaning to mention it for a while, and he just had a flurry of interesting posts. The content covers all types of novel visualization techniques.

Session at the Microsoft BI Conference

wmorein — Tue, 08 May 2007 06:10:00 GMT

If you plan to be at the Microsoft BI Conference in Seattle this week, make sure to stop by my Chalk Talk on Friday at 9:45 AM in CT Theater 3. This will be a smaller, informal session with particular emphasis on connecting Visio to SQL Server Analysis Services.

DXF, DWG & Visio

wmorein — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 04:18:00 GMT

Now that Visio 2007 is out the door (mostly -- the consumer launch is coming up soon) we are looking at future versions.

Do you ever open, save or use AutoCAD files (DXF/DWG) with Visio? If so, the Visio product team would like to talk to you. Send me a note (use the contact form on the left side of this page) and we'll be in contact.

Thanks,
Bill

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

wmorein — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 03:47:00 GMT

I've seen a number of links to a new paper and page showing a summary of different visualization techniques: A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Since I often find that the most challenging aspect of visualization for most people is coming up with interesting novel ways to display data, this is a useful tool for inspiration. There is a fair amount of repetition in the table (people have a fondness for renaming similar diagram types) but it is great to see a resource like this.

As you look at all of these diagram types and want to think about how they would be used for your data, it is interesting to think about how they use the available visual vocabulary (derived from the Semiology of Graphics by Jacques Bertin)

Position
Color Hue
Texture
Connection
Containment
Density
Color Saturation
Shape
Length
Angle
Slope
Area
Volume

For example, taking a look at a process swimlane diagram (Sw in the Periodic Table) we see Connection, Containment, Position, and Shape used as follows:

Connection represents the sequence of the steps.
Containment (in the swimlanes) represents the department performing the process.
Position on the x axis represents time.
Shape represents the type of step (rectangle for normal step, diamond for a decision).
We also use text to represent identify each step.

Of course, we have a fair amount of the vocabulary left over for the rest of the data that might be associated. That is where Data Graphics come in.

Presentation on Building Solutions using the Visio 2007 Data API

wmorein — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 04:07:00 GMT

The Office team has put up video of all of the presentations from the Office Developer Conference held this past spring. At the conference, I presented a Visio 2007 session focusing on building solutions using the new Data APIs. The direct link to the video of the session is available here. The quality of the video is high, so beware that it is a 182 MB download.

In the session we cover the three main aspects of programming against the Data APIs: Importing the data, linking the data to shapes, and displaying the data using Data Graphics. Along with the slides detailing the APIs and some possible scenarios, I build an example application (visualizing sales on a supermarket floor plan) from scratch.

Here's a high level guide to what is in the presentation:

2:00 – Demo of the end user data features
6:48 – Example scenarios and applications
11:20 – The first part of the demo, including an overview of the application and the initial creation of the data solution
22:20 – Details on the Data API
39:10 – The second part of the demo, showing more on programming Data Graphics and creating new shapes from data

We'll be publishing full documentation on the Data API soon, but this should give you a good introduction to what is possible and some tips on how to get started.

Presenting Your Data in Diagrams

wmorein — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 02:01:00 GMT

When you are looking to persuade or enlighten, you need to be able to do a great job of presenting information in a way that your audience will understand. As we worked on Visio “12” one of our main goals was to make it incredibly easy to create great looking diagrams that present large amounts of data.

If you think about some of the most common Visio diagram types (e.g. Floor Plans, Flowcharts, Network Diagrams), they already show a lot of information in a way people can quickly grasp. Examples include relationships and order shown through lines/connectors, shading and color to indicate materials or type, and individual entities called out through text labels.

What happens when there is more data? Sitting in a database or spreadsheet somewhere, there is always additional detail. Behind your floor plan is information on the occupant of each office, the number or desks and chairs, and the last time the walls were painted. Behind your flowchart is information on who owns each process step, the number of times each step was performed in the last month, and how much each step costs to perform. We’re making it easy to bring all that data in, but that is just the beginning.

One thing that a lot of people struggle with is choosing how they want to visually represent the additional data – the information that goes beyond the basic way we represent an Org Chart or timeline) . What are all of the options? How do you choose among them? How much data can really be represented in the diagram at once?

There is a ton of information and research out there on this topic. One really interesting paper (Automating the Design of Graphical Presentations of Relational Information by Jock Mackinlay) breaks down the options for how to graphically display data as follows:

Position
Color Hue
Texture
Connection
Containment
Density
Color Saturation
Shape
Length
Angle
Slope
Area
Volume

From the perspective of building diagrams, I tend to think that text labels belong in there as well. Depending on the type of data you want to represent, some of these encodings can be more or less valuable. When I am putting together a diagram, I find it useful to run through these options and think about which of them might make sense. In future posts, I'll run through some common diagram examples and talk about how to use that framework to build up your diagram.