User Needs

Alan Smith OBEONS Data Visualisation Centre, United Kingdom

@theboysmithy

First, a little look at big data

12 billion

The Big Data challenge...

Back to user needs...

User needs are not new

1801

Societal challenges

Numeracy and statistical literacy

“I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is

higher, not lower, than -8, but I’m not having it”

Tina Farrel, 23, Manchester

Numbers about people not liking numbers

In England, there is a ‘Skills for Life’ Survey, measuring levels of numeracy, literacy and IT skills in the working age population

In 2003, 46.9% of working age adults in England lacked

Level 1 numeracy skills.

In 2011, 49.1%of working age adults in England lacked

Level 1 numeracy skills.

The Data Mountains

• The global data supply reached 2.8 zettabytes (ZB) in 2012 (IDC Digital Universe study)

• 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (IBM)

• From now until 2020, the digital universe will about double every two years (IDC).

• From 2005 to 2020, the digital universe will grow by a factor of 300, from 130 exabytes to 40,000 exabytes, or 40 trillion gigabytes (more than 5,200 gigabytes for every man, woman, and child in 2020)(IDC).

To engage, content needs to be engaging

Learning to see how people see

Above All, Users Need Context

QuickTime™ and aGIF decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Perceptual Tuning what can you see?

Perceptual Tuning what can you see?

Impact on Policy Decisions?

how does official data inform the debate?

Change over time job done?

A statistical role to focus presentation on what matters

Add context use other data appropriately

Appropriate narrative

...makes a clear message

Compare and contrast the differing messages

Another example

A perfect graph? anything wrong?

White space is important!

the story can be in the ‘no data’ space

the remaining distanceto equality

Understand the implications

scaling is a statistical control

the remaining distanceto female domination

Function & Aesthetics

A cautionary story

• I conducted a survey which asked respondents just one closed question:

Q. Are you happy with the customer service you received today?

A. YES/NO

RESULTS:

85% said YES

15% said NO

Survey Results: 85% YES15% NO

TOTAL pixels: 76,523pixels ‘NO’: 11,579

=15%

TOTAL pixels: 61,621pixels ‘NO’: 7,557

TOTAL pixels: 29,002pixels ‘NO’: 2,154

=12% =7%

Function & Aesthetics

Bateman et al

“...people‘s accuracy in describing the embellished charts was no worse than for plain charts, and that their recall after a two-to-three-week gap was significantly better.”

“Although we are cautious about recommending that all charts be

produced in this style, our results question some of the

premises of the minimalist approach to chart design.

Thank you

Alan Smith OBEONS Data Visualisation Centre, United Kingdom

@theboysmithy