This week we looked at a range of different charts in order to familiarise and help us with our dashboard. We looked at how they created and understood charts in the earliest years, we also looked at different types of charts and data.
Firstly, we looked at the history of charts and where they came from, we have previously went over hieroglyphics so I had already been familiar with these type of infographics. We also looked at examples of how charts have been used to convey data. One image that stood out to me was the London Underground, I want to use a similar, less complex, layout to show the distance and areas I travelled to over the week. I like the use of different colours used for each different train, this will be something I will consider when creating my dashboard.
Another image that sparked my intrest was this iconography graph/chart, I liked this style as, for me, I can understand this use of images a lot faster than just normal data and numbers. Users can usually understand pictures a lot faster than words, I am not sure if I would use it on my dashboard however, I can appreciate this style of infographics, I may use some sort of icon within my dashboard now that I have seen this style of graph.
It is better to remember the simplified pictures than to forget accurate figures. -Otto Neurath
To find out how data has been presented in a chart we need to visualise the data, by doing this we can discover three things; a trend, a correlation and outliers. A trend is when data is being repeated or continuously going towards a direction similarly to a pattern, the eye will automatically understand trends. A correlation is when data is reflected, when comparing data it is similar or the same. Outliers include data that does not follow a trend or pattern, they stand out because they are different.
There are two types of data qualitative and quantitative, Quantitative data is numbers, countable, or measurable, under quantitative data there is discrete and continous data. Discrete represents exact figures you can count, you cannot divide this data into more than 1 group. Continous data that is measured and has a value within a range. Where as qualitative data is interpretation-based, descriptive, and relating to language. This can be known as categorical as the data can be broken up into groups.
There are a range of different types of charts that we can use to convey information. Some charts work better than others to portray different information. It is important to know the design practises when using a certain chart.
