There was an estimate of 3.5 billion internet users worldwide in 2016. This means about 45 percent of the global population accessed the internet that year. The majority of global internet users are located in East and South Asia, while China is the largest online market in the world. In 2016, China had over 721 million internet users, more than double the amount of third-ranked U.S. with nearly 290 million internet users. India ranked second in number of users; Brazil and Japan complete the top 5. English is the most common language on the internet by share of users, followed by Chinese and Spanish.
The previous class we spoke about how aesthetics and the look and feel of the dashboard are important and how it is even more important to convey the critical information to the audience in a way they can understand it easily. Aesthetics are an important element of dashboard design but to be effective a designer must first take the time to explore three key points: the purpose of the dashboard, who their audience is, and how they will use it.
Let’s look at the following visualization.
Visualization link:
What is good about this visualization
The visualization is beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, provides a greater context of information and some rich comparisons.
This visualization represents an amalgamation of graphs which are beautifully represented in vibrant colors and captures the audience.
The visualization supports the overall claim of internet worldwide by giving us details of the increase in worldwide internet users, regional distribution of internet users worldwide, segments in internet traffic and internet traffic contributed by mobile users.
What can be changed…
who is the audience?: It is better to understand who are you designing it for. It is important that we take into consideration the user’s tech savviness so that we can implement some UI elements that are common or known to the audience. The first graph in the visualization, it would take the viewers some time to associate the various components and make sense out of the graph.
Needs to be intuitive: Labeling of metrics can be done in a better way. Adding clear, concise labels to the visualization and maintain uniform text font throughout thus removing any cognitive barriers.
https://www.statista.com/chart/7246/the-countries-with-the-fastest-internet/
Option to drill down: the graph that represents the regional distribution of internet users worldwide could accommodate information on other continents and also provide country wise information on internet usage on drilling down so as to keep the visualization simple at the same time accommodate as much information as possible.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/249562/number-of-worldwide-internet-users-by-region/
Story Telling and flow in visualization: The visualization depicts a story connecting various aspects of internet worldwide but would make more sense if the various graphs were for the same year making it easier for comparison and contract the graphs.
Conclusion:
Understanding the various data visualization options and redesigning and incorporating the above-mentioned changes will make the visualization better.
Since dashboards often express dense information and visualizations that are imperative to an organization’s success; good visual design implemented in a dashboard needs to be clear, practical, and elicit proper emotional responses.
References:
https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/whitepapers/dashboards-for-financial-services.pdf
https://www.geckoboard.com/blog/dashboard-design-what-makes-an-effective-kpi-dashboard/#.WRZh_Wjyu00