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Category: Visualization

Tooltips on Power BI Pages

Published 2022-09-26 by Kevin Feasel

Teo Lachev offers some help:

Want to display visual-left hint to perplexed users that explains what your visual is supposed to reveal? Like me, you have missed the handy Power BI help tooltips feature that allows you to pop up some helpful text for each visual.

This works best for blocks of information a person needs to see once. Rather than it showing up every time you visit the page, make it available via a tooltip. You’ll want to make sure the tooltip is readily visible for people new to the report but not so overwhelming that it annoys people who already know how this thing works. That, however, is a completely different challenge.

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Parameter Reloading in RMarkdown

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Williams wants to improve the user experience:

Recently I needed to reload a parameter, without reloading the page. The parameter was bound to a data frame, where end-users selected a value and then I looked up other fields in the data frame further down the page (for example, a name was selected, but I wanted the identifier from the same record). It wasn’t exactly intuitive, so here’s how I did it.

Click through for code and explanation.

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The Bullet Chart

Published 2022-09-22 by Kevin Feasel

Amy Esselman explains what bullet charts are and when they are useful:

A bullet graph, or a bullet chart, is a variation of a bar chart, typically consisting of a primary bar layered on top of a secondary stack of less-prominent bars. Bullet graphs are best used for making comparisons, such as showing progress against a target or series of thresholds. For example, an organization may want to measure the current year’s sales against a goal, while contrasting it with the performance of the prior year. 

Bullet graphs leverage our familiarity with bar graphs to deliver a lot of information in a compact space. If you want to display metric performance against a goal or reference point, a bullet graph offers a nicely consolidated design. 

Read on for examples and alternatives.

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Simplifying a Shrinkage Report

Published 2022-09-21 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Cisneros cleans up a complex visual made up of less complex visuals:

There are opportunities to improve this visual, but I appreciate that the graph is appropriately titled, that the legend is clear and easy to find, and that the most recent data point is the only one that is labeled. On its own, it’s an acceptable view of the data, albeit one that could be strengthened.

When this visual is considered in its greater context, however, the need to improve the legibility of this graph becomes obvious.

These charts are generated at multiple levels of geographic and thematic detail. Each one is then shared as part of one large report, with almost no visual variation from region to region, level to level, or week to week:

There’s a lot going for that redesign.

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Keyboard Focus on Controls in Shiny

Published 2022-09-20 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Williams wants to take control:

It is possible – though not the default – set set keyboard focus on load to a control in an R Markdown web page rendered with Shiny.

Setting keyboard focus when an R Markdown page is loaded is beneficial to users, who can start interacting with the page without having to first click the control.

Click through to learn how. This is one of the biggest losses we have in the GUI era: that you have a mouse necessitates using the mouse for everything. But that’s a “get off my lawn” rant for another day.

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Setting a Loading Message for a DataTable in RMarkdown

Published 2022-09-19 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Williams wants you to wait patiently:

Waits are inevitable, whether getting data from an API or database, or manipulating data in an interactive R Markdown document. Showing a “loading” or “updating” message is a beneficial incremental improvement to users’ experience.

The code at https://github.com/thomasswilliams/r-markdown-snippets/blob/main/loading-message-datatable.Rmd, when run from RStudio, demonstrates using CSS and pseudo-elements to display text in a DataTables (DT package).

Read on to see an example of how to use this.

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Powershell Colors and Icons

Published 2022-09-13 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff Hill has fun with terminals:

If you have followed along with me before, chances are you know I like color. Color helps me zoom in on the information I want faster. Color can help me know if I have the right number of curly braces. Modern browsers and word processors show a red squiggly line when you misspell a word. Your eye is drawn to that bit of color that is different than the rest of the page. Keep reading and I’ll show you how to add some spice to your PowerShell experience.

I heartily endorse the mention of Windows Terminal later on. If you haven’t tried it before, it’s a worthy successor to CMD and the basic Powershell terminal.

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The Joy of Treemaps

Published 2022-09-08 by Kevin Feasel

Simon Rowe answers describes one of my favorite often-inappropriate visuals:

Dr Shneiderman developed the “treemap” in order to visualise this large amount of data—with multiple levels of folders and subfolders—in an efficient way, without taking up too much screen real estate. The treemap uses a series of nested rectangles, sized proportionally to the corresponding data value, to deliver an organised and multi-level view into any hierarchical data set.

Treemaps get misused a lot but are really valuable in specific scenarios. Click through to learn when (and when not) to use a treemap.

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Visualizing Delay Times on Subway Stations

Published 2022-09-08 by Kevin Feasel

Benjamin Smith looks for delays:

Any Torontonian who has commuted regularly on the TTC has probably experienced their fair share of delays on the subway. Having experienced a few recently I was inspired to visualize the average delay times across all stops on the subway. What are the stations with the longest delays on average this past year? Could we make a nice visual with it?

Click through for the end result as well as the process to get there.

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