{"id":2084,"date":"2017-05-13T04:51:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T04:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/?p=2084"},"modified":"2017-05-13T04:51:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T04:51:15","slug":"are-3d-info-graphics-cool-or-can-baffle-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/2017\/05\/13\/are-3d-info-graphics-cool-or-can-baffle-anyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Are 3D Info-graphics cool or can baffle anyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nowadays people are working on n-dimensions for a better understanding of data and to get accurate insights. However, an\u00a0infographic with\u00a0more than 2-dimensional representation will misguide a user and even creates difficulty to understand.<\/p>\n

Let’s walk through a classic example of this scenario, image 1.0 is a column chart but in 3-dimensional representation. It tries to depict sales of widgets monthly, there are 16 widgets that are being sold for 11 months of a year. At first glance, the chart looks really cool with column coming to life and appealing.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Image 1.0 – 3D Infographics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Problems: Aesthetic scenes, Distortion, Accessibility.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a step back and understand few things before we go ahead, who are the targetted audience and what do they need? I guess that’s for Sales managers who would be the targetted audience\u00a0for this kind of report. The information they look for is sales for each product, in this case, a widget for a time period (Weekly, monthly or yearly). This list can extend to the region, geo this list goes on..\u00a0and is totally dependent on the kind of business a company own. \u00a0In this case, all the information is being depicted correctly in this chart but by using a wrong viz.<\/p>\n

From a viz developer point of view, aesthetic sense plays a major role in increasing usage. This claim can go wrong if we use a 3D chart which is beautiful and appealing to one’s eyes. As this chart doesn’t help to understand data for the months from April to November as they all overlap on each other. Secondly, there are too many legend colors which create lots of confusion to the reader. In addition to this, we can see that color changes when there is an overlap of bars.<\/p>\n

Coming to the metrics that are depicted, they do not reflect any figure of sales i.e. in millions or thousands, as a sales manager one would be really\u00a0interested in those figures.<\/p>\n

Accessibility\u00a0plays a major role in navigating or drilling through the reports, which is missing in this report. Image 2.0 is a sample sales\u00a0report which shows how line graph can better interpret\u00a0sales figures than column\u00a0chart. Secondly, when you hover on the line we can see the actual sales numbers which give an exact idea of how the team is performing and are the targets met.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Image 2.0 – Reference Chart for Sales reporting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Segmentation\u00a0of products into multiple categories is very important to compare. In image 1.0 we can see that there are more than 15 widgets, they are high in number to compare.<\/p>\n

Finally, a person working on viz should first understand who are the audience,\u00a0what data are they looking for and at what granularity. Interpreting in 3D viz looks and sounds cool but it doesn’t serve the purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nowadays people are working on n-dimensions for a better understanding of data and to get accurate insights. However, an\u00a0infographic with\u00a0more than 2-dimensional representation will misguide a user and even creates difficulty to understand. Let’s walk through a classic example of this scenario, image 1.0 is a column chart but in 3-dimensional representation. It tries to … Continue reading Are 3D Info-graphics cool or can baffle anyone?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1952,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"nsanka","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/author\/nsanka\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Nowadays people are working on n-dimensions for a better understanding of data and to get accurate insights. However, an\u00a0infographic with\u00a0more than 2-dimensional representation will misguide a user and even creates difficulty to understand. Let’s walk through a classic example of this scenario, image 1.0 is a column chart but in 3-dimensional representation. It tries to…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1952"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2084"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2242,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions\/2242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}