Presentation And Visualization Methods

Representing data visually is very important since it gives a deep insight and at the same time saves time. I quote the British data journalist David McCandless here,

"By visualizing information, we can turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you're lost in information, an information map is kind of useful"

This quote reveals in a simple manner, why data visualization is useful. For this post I will demonstrate how data can be represented for three different business scenarios.

Order Management
An order placed on an e-commerce website has dimensions like seller, product, multiple dates for order approval, order processing and order shipment. these are role playing dimensions. Facts involved are quantity, price.

Optimal Way of representation
All the dimensions except the dates can be comprehensively displayed on a standard invoice. But to give a holistic view of the shipment process to the customer can be challenging. A customer may want to know where his order is at any given time. The best way to display this information is to use a timeline. This timeline can be divided in different stages such as order processing, delivery etc.

To give a visual representation of this , here is an image:The emphasis here is on the timeline which represents where the product is at any given time.

Figure- Order Tracking system by Flipkart.com

Healthcare
Data Management in the Healthcare industry is a complex issue because of the variety in the industry. This also affects the ability to represent information visually. Consider medical tests. A testing center conducts multiple tests that test multiple parameters resulting in variety of data. Every test needs different facts and measurements. Obviously there the common dimensions like doctor, patient, date etc involved.

Optimal Way of representation

The tests involve so many parameters of measurements that it can overwhelm the patient and confuse him/her.The best way to represent information of medical tests will be to show a comparison so that the patient understands the report easily. This comparison can be anything like comparing the measurements with the normal measurements or displaying the facts on a scale of low to high.

The following sample medical test result best demonstrates the meaning of the words above.

Figure- Bloodwork Cardiology Result Template from Wired Magazine

Ecommerce

The ecommerce industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. If you have a ecommerce website then knowing your customers is very important. You need to analyze the click-stream data to make important decisions about sales & advertising strategies. 

Optimal Way of representation

There are multiple dimensions involved. Dimensions like product, source of visits, date etc. To get an overall view of the performance of the website the owner should have a comprehensive dashboard that shows visits over time, the conversion rate i.e. the ratio of orders to visits, the contribution of sources that directed the user to the website, performance of different products over time.

Ecwid with the help of Google Analytics is a very powerful tool to represent such facts in an attractive manner. It gives a good bird eye view of a website's performance in different aspects like sales, visits etc. It consolidates things from various dimensions and gives a good visual representation of all the facts.

Figure- An ecommerce site  performance report by Ecwid

References
1.Figure 1- https://www.flipkart.com/order_details?order_id=OD40105003095&token=43b20e7069204bc6bcca9ba31e0eeb6b&utm_content=click&cmpid=email_oms_delivery_confirmation_email

2. Figure 2-http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ff_bloodwork5_f.jpg
http://help.ecwid.com/customer/portal/articles/1167247-how-can-i-get-sales-reports-based-on-my-orders-in-ecwid

3. Figure 3- http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ff_bloodwork5_f.jpg