Better Use Of Color

Color is often mis-used in graphing data. For an excellent introduction to the use of color, see "Practical Use of Color In Charts" on Stephen Few's site. A great introduction. Often we send out charts with color gradients that are horrible. Why? Because we're researchers, not color experts. Well now a very cool tool is available that lets you select the right color gradients. It's called ColorBrewer and is available here.

Making the world's most boring statistics come to life

It doesn't get much more boring than global health statistics. Watch Hans Rosling bring this data to life so that action can be taken on the hidden insights. Don't get sucked into thinking it's just his software that brings the data to life. While the software is cool, Hans subtly incorporates all of the basic rudiments of data visualization and presention skills and storytelling to make this data come alive. He's also baked in all four ingredients of insight, especially contextual understanding. Watch how he uses analogies and metaphors. Look for the basic Edward Tufte principles at work. He's a not-for-profit using free secondary data. Imagine what we could do...

Watch the video here.

Context and Pearls For Breakfast

The first necessary ingredient for insight is to fully understand the context surrounding the business issue, the research objectives, and the survey questions. Anything we do to get a full 360-degree perspective of the client's burning questions. What's the view from marketing? Operations? Sales? Channel?

Context is Everything. An old adage that's highly relevent to what we do. This recent Washington Post study is an excellent reminder of how context matters:

Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.

Data, charts, numbers out of context mean nothing. The best analysis with the coolest chart standing out of context will be ignored, much like Joshua Bell was ignored. If the world's best musician can't cut through the fog of everyone's daily routine, than one hundred pages of bar charts certainly won't.

Quest for Actionable Insights

Every time I hear clients scream for "Actionable Insights!" it reminds me of King Arthur and his boys when the encounter the Knights of Ni! Watch this scene and you'll recognize our AM's and RM's wandering the dark foggy wood before encountering the strange client.