Alices Adventures in Reporting Services Presenter: Jen Stirrup, Contact: SQLBits VII Saturday 2 nd October, 2010

Agenda Business Intelligence and the Red Queens Race you want to get somewhere… you must run at least twice as fast as that!

Agenda Business Intelligence and the Red Queens Race you want to get somewhere… you must run at least twice as fast as that! Business Intelligence and Alices Question What is the use of a book, without pictures?

Agenda Business Intelligence and the Red Queens Race you want to get somewhere… you must run at least twice as fast as that! Business Intelligence and Alices Question What is the use of a book, without pictures? Practical Applications – the Doorknob Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction. Over to you!

Reporting and the Red Queen

Why not just tables? Zimbabwean inflation rates (official) since independence DateRateDateRateDateRateDateRateDateRateDateRate 19807%198114%198215%198319%198410%198510% %198710%19888%198914%199017%199148% %199320%199425%199528%199616%199720% % % % % % % % % , % ,212. 3% ,150, % (July)

Thinking with your Eyes

Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

Pre-attentive Attributes AttributeExampleAssumption Spatial Position 2D Grouping 2D Position Sloping to the right = Greater FormLength Width Orientation Size Longer = Greater Higher = Greater ColourHue Intensity Brighter = Greater Darker = Greater

Pre-attentive Attributes AttributeExampleGraph Type Spatial Position 2D Grouping 2D Position Line Graph FormLength Width Orientation Size Bar Chart ColourHue Intensity Scatter Chart

Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

Visual Integration Chartjunk Data/Ink Ratio

Mobilising Visual Integration Affordance Highlighting – bright colours Increasing Intensity = Increasing Values Eye Tracking Studies Eye Path going from cluster to legend, and back again (Ratwani, 2008)

Mobilising Visual Integration Sequential Palettes Diverging Palettes Qualitative Palettes

Visual Integration

Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

Building an understanding of the graph Eye Tracking Studies Eye Path going from cluster to cluster, rather than cluster to legend (Ratwani, 2008)

Cognitive Integration Summary first Zoom and filter Then details on-demand (Schneiderman, 1999)

Cognitive Integration Comparison Sorting Bookmarks – analytical view of browsing

Mobilising Cognitive Integration Humans are not good at judging: 2D Area Angles

Mobilising Cognitive Integration Humans are not good at judging: 2D Area Angles Pie Charts and Gauges rely on these characteristics…

Lost Finale: Mins Breakdown

Bullet Chart Text LabelBar to display Performance measure Marker to display Comparative measure

Bar Chart Example - Original

Dot Plot Example

Bullet Graph Example

Summary Reporting and the Red Queens Race Three Stages of Processing Some Practical Suggestions! Over to you!

Contact Details Twitter.com/jenstirrup

Coming up… P/X001 Understanding and Preventing SQL Injection Attacks Kevin Kline P/L001 SSIS Fieldnotes Darren Green P/L002 The (Geospatial) Shapes of Things to Come Simon Munro P/L005 End to End Master Data Management with SQL Server Master Data Services Jeremy Kashel P/T007 Understanding Microsoft Certification in SQL Server Chris Testa-O'Neill # SQLBITS

References Information Visualisation, Perception For Design, Second Edition, Colin Ware, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco CA. Cleveland, W.S. The elements of graphing data. Wadsworth Advanced Books and Software, Monterey, Canada, 1985 Treisman, A. Features and Objects in visual processing. Scientific American, 255(2): , 1986 Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers, MacGuire et al 1999 Chartjunk image used 80 4-point "ley lines" pass through 137 random points. Original raster image by The Anome, vectors by Mysid. for details. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.ley lines

References Raj M. Ratwani, J. Gregory Trafton, Deborah A. Boehm-Davis (2008). Thinking graphically: Connecting vision and cognition during graph comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14 (1), DOI: Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman, Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, Academic Press, San Diego, California, 1999, quoting a research paper by Kumar, Plaisant, and Shneiderman.) Visual Explanations, Edward Tufte (1997)