The earliest known cave painting has been dated to be nearly 44,000 years old. While the earliest known script is only around 5,400 years old. Images as a means of communication has been around almost 8 times longer than its writing counterpart. Thus, it is not surprising that humans today can process images 60,000 times faster than any writing form.
Images consist primarily of 3 features:
- Shape
- Size
- Color
Data Visualization leverages the above features to assist the human decipher information in the most efficient manner. I will discuss in detail how it is able to do so in the coming blogs.
Washington Post had beautifully explained the concepts of ‘social distancing‘ and ‘flattening the curve‘, in a way that it can be understood by anyone through data visualization. They have done it by simulating how the spread of contagious disease like COVID-19 can be reduce by social distancing and restricting ones movement.
However, there is a word of caution here. Using tools like Tableau or Google Data Studio is like driving a sports car. An inexperienced data visualizer may get carried away by cluttering the dashboard with many redundant information or worse, making an incorrect representation of data. Thereby, either confusing or overwhelming the user. I will write a separate blog of how one can create an effective dashboard.
There are few companies which specializes in creating, maintaining and updating dashboards. One of which is Perfview Management Consulting where we have a domain knowledge of retail, logistics and finance and also deep understanding of data visualization.