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Juice Analytics

Decorating dataNovember 29

An early Christmas present has arrived from the DabbleDB team for the 100 million or so of us that have to work with data on a day to day basis.

They’ve created a do-what-I-mean web tool that lets you show how you want data to be restructured and bang! it’s done. Check out the video.

It’s a great idea and a elegant, easy to use interface. There are so many directions I’d love to see them take this tool.

Cleanupdata is a great name, but they’re really giving you better ways to restructure data. This tool won’t help you find and fix errors and anomalies in data. At least not yet.

I also hope they extend cleanupdata to let people automate these data restructuring operations. If only you could apply a cleanup created in cleanupdata.com to 1,000 Excel spreadsheets or to a database table.

If you like this, it’s worth checking out DabbleDB. They have rethought the database with a database/spreadsheet/web forms/visualizer platypus of a tool. It lets your data be pliable in ways that databases don’t allow, while retaining structure that spreadsheets don’t recognize.

Added: Avi Bryant, one of t

Baby Dashboard 2.0November 25

A couple years ago we released our first baby dashboard design. I’ll admit it was a bit rudimentary. It tracked only the most basic measures and offered little insight into your baby’s current mindset. I was a new father and had a relatively superficial understanding of the nuances of babies, not to mention actionable baby metrics.

With the arrival of my second child, I set to work designing a dashboard that would give a parent all the important information they need, presented in ways that let them react to baby data even in a harried household. Let me present the prototype of our new Baby Dashboard 2.0, modeled by my daughter Maya.

We use the same heads-up display technology as in our first release, but now with more sophisticated data collection techniques we’ve included a meltdown prediction chart and real-time translation engine.

There are a few features in here that I believe demonstrate important fundamentally design principles for great Information Experiences:

• Choose metrics and information that a user can act on. Informat

#1 Barrier to BI SuccessNovember 20

In case you missed it, Information Week recently released a report that listed, among other things, the "top 10 roadblocks to BI success" (skip to page 48 for the list). So, does anyone want to guess what IW found the top barrier to be?

As it turns out, it wasn't "data throughput", or "access to data sources/more data", or even "more features". The number one barrier to BI success, according to IW, is (get this) "Complexity of BI tools and Interfaces". That's right, it's not technology, but usability that keeps people from getting value from BI solutions. People actually want software that's easier to use, not harder.

In our eyes, this is just another example that the BI industry isn't being constrained by the technology. We don't need more tools, or even more features. The problem isn't going to be solved by technology. What we need are solutions that, for people who depend on information, make it easier to see, understand, and use the information that really matters. What we need are solutions that are designed for a purpose, that transform data into easy to understand information, and that are beautifully usable.

Oh. Wait a minute. That's what we do.

The Purpose Driven DesignNovember 17

Have you ever tried to define a word such as "design"? It's not too easy. Here's what the New Oxford American Dictionary says:

design |dəˈzīn| noun

2 purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object

I guess that probably covers it. But then again, I find myself asking my favorite question: "So what?". I mean, what does it help me actually get done?

It looks to me like the folks over at Duarte Design have it figured out. Nancy Duarte made this post regarding the recent DesignThinkers2008 conference. In it, she very astutely stated "[proper] design isn’t about decoration, it’s about meaning and access to information". Very cool.

It's easy to "get your flash on" and decorate information visualization up with all sorts of glassy, bouncy and flying designs; they might even be considered "tastefully stylish". But if you haven't focused on the meaning in the information and haven't made it accessible to the observer (i.e. understandable so they can actually do something with it), you've missed the purpose of the whole design process. So when you're designing a solution for those you love, make sure you stay purpose driven.

Thanks Duarte for helping us keep our eyes on the ball!

(For those of you who

Information Experiences™...or, Whaa what would you say...yah do here?November 10