Recently I took photographs of some of my guitars as I was creating a little APEX application to log them and record information about each one. E.g. the serial number, the date of manufacture, the pickups, the string gauge, etc. I then got to thinking – maybe if I recorded when I played each one I could create a ‘popularity chart!’
So, before I did that for real, I created a prototype and surfaced that in Oracle Analytics Cloud, with a line chart for each guitar. This showed the months of this year from 1 (Jan) to 9 (September) … as that was where in the year I was when I did it … on the X-Axis and the number of times in each month I played it on the Y-Axis.
That is shown below – nice and clear? Minimalist certainly and technically I could have done this in any number of ways e.g. having multiple coloured lines, one per guitar, on a single graph.
The three analytics are for a USA ’58 anniversary re-issue Flying V, a USA Les Paul Traditional Pro II and a standard USA Explorer.
I simply created a single visualisation and then used the Duplicate Visualization functionality and tweaked the filter on each to be for a specific type of guitar. I then permitted the filter value to be shown, so it is clear to the user which guitar it is.
However, I’ve recently been working with Gestalt psychology principles such as Figure and Ground and so I was thinking if there was a more emotional response that I can trigger, not just displaying the empiricism of values.
If I use Oracle Analytics’ handy Duplicate Canvas feature, I can quickly create a new canvas containing an alternative view of these three visualisations.
Then for each visualisation on the new canvas, I have loaded up an appropriate image, made it 55% transparent to push it into the background to make this the ‘Ground’ whilst my distinctive black line is retained to act as the ‘Figure’.
I also tweaked the filter defintion to hide it, as now I have a visual cue to the guitar I no longer need to be told which one it is.
If I now do that for the other guitars we get something like this. I can still clearly see the values and interact with the visualisations and be able to drill and ‘brush’ to affect other visualisations I may create.
For me, what this brings is that emotional engagement that I was seeking. Does it add a *lot* of cognitive load? I don’t really think so. What it makes me consider though is the feel/radius of the neck, how heavy/light it is and what I played when I was using it and which one I actually want to be playing right now. I seem to have surfaced quite a lot more than what was in the original graph – maybe that is Gestalt for me – the whole is other than the sum of the parts.
I can enhance that too, by removing grid lines and making the Y-Axis legend bolder.
In the day-to-day work I do with customers, I’m really not keen on adding visual noise or adding to cognitive overload, but I think that, in certain circumstances, when an emotional response adds to the value, then images can be a value-add to the visualisation.
Get in touch and let me know what you think.