Recently I saw a big screaming ad that said “the chartbuster rules”. Of course, I know that chartbusters rule. Not just because I was one of them 🙂
So I got curious and read on. And I realized the ‘chartbuster’ is actually a car, not some cool, spreadsheet waving, goatee sporting dude like Jon Peltier. What a bummer!
And then to my horror of horrors, I saw the exploding 3d pie chart, with reflection effects & glossy colors. And the sole purpose of the chart is to create an impression that Verna sells better than any car in India.
First take a look at the chart:
Now for criticism
Obviously there is no denying that Verna sells better. If you look at the number of units sold, Verna’s 56,486 is better than any other numbers.
But is that the impression the chart gives?
If you just look at slicers and colors (which is what you would do), you feel that Verna has 40-45% market share.
What is the reality? It is 31.4%
Why such a distortion in our perception?!?
This is because, the ad uses a mildly evil magic called 3d pie charts, to distort what you perceive.
Then the chart maker sprinkled this 3d pie chart with assorted poisonous sprouts called as ‘customized rotation of slices’ and ‘exploding the pie for Verna, to make it look big’.
Now, the chart means one thing, but says another. Its like my wife when she wants new shoes.
Can chart rotation impact your perception – here is the proof!
Now, you might be wondering, “Oh Chandoo, come on my man. Why would I be dumb enough to fall for this.”.
So I have made a proof. I made a similar 3d pie chart from these exact numbers. Then I rotated it from 0 to 360 degrees. And you can see how the slices of pie play with your eye.
So what is a better alternative for this chart?
In this case a column chart is better. It clearly shows the leadership position of Verna without resorting to sneaky tricks.
What more, you can format the column chart so that it has all the bling! (not that I recommend such over formatting)
PS: A newer version of this ad features column chart, albeit with convoluted staircase representation.
What do you think about rotated, exploded 3d pie charts
The only time I want to rotate a pie is when it is too big and the portion I want to eat is on the other side.
What about you? do you make 3d pies? Are they tasty or sneaky (like the Verna pie)?
Share your thoughts using comments.
Take our 3d pie pledge
As a fun exercise, why don’t you take our 3d Pie pledge. Here it is.
I promise to never make a 3d pie chart. If I ever see one, I promise to not rotate or explode it. I also promise to create alternative charts (usually column, bar, line or scatter plots) so that my audience can see the truth better.
And oh yeah, I promise to bake & eat pies whenever possible. Apart from cakes, pastries, ice creams, biscuits and other assorted fun foods that is.
signed…
Go ahead and take the pledge
PS: Chartbuster series of articles & more charting principles.
7 Responses to “Project Dashboard + Tweetboard = pure awesomeness!!!”
I would like to see actual hash-tagged DM tweets go out to the specific information consumers. That would be an interesting way to communicate the key daily data to interested parties.
A Twitter-like secure application like Yammer might be a good fit with this.
For example, how about daily tweets to selected user groups (secure) that would display sales, bookings, cash receipts, cash disbursed and a second version that would show the same info for MTD, QTD or YTD figures.
@Dan, it would be great. I did not taught about implementing it on this dashboard because twitter is blocked to the whole intranet here. However, there's a discussion here about how can we send these tweets to blackberries (probably through e-mail) automatically. (I'd like to see this implemented on a jabber restricted network as well, but here it'll probably not happen)
The wrap-up versions you mentioned doesn't apply to my particular scenario, but on a sales tweetboard it would be a great tool indeed - choosing who will receive which message according to hashtags. I'll think on something, thanks for the advice. 🙂
(Ah, btw, I'm Fernando... 🙂 )
@Dan: That is a fun idea. Instead of tightly integrating twitter functionality with a dashboard, i think it would be cool if we have a "tweet this" button that users can click after selecting a range of cells. We can easily show a dialog with the concatenated output of the selected cells and ask user to edit the text and eventually "send to twitter".
For eg. you can select the annual sales figure cell and click on "tweet this" button upon which a dialog will show the value. Then you can pre-pend it something like "DM @boss look at our sales this year: "
@Aires.. thanks once again.
Wow it looks really good. Not sure though how much the tweet facility would help in real world project management, but certainly having a dashboard on a project should be a key deliverable when learning how to manage a project
The other use of this is during the software development life cycle especially when you have parallel streams of development and testing going on. Using a dashboard is a quick way for everyone on the team to see where the project is at and how it all fits together.
Regards
Susan de Sousa
Site Editor http://www.my-project-management-expert.com
Hi Chandoo,
I purchased the project management toolkit but the dashboard shown above with the imbedded scroll bars. Is it included in the project pack??
Thanks
Sue
The gantt chart section of this dashboard is similar to one I have recently created: http://xlcalibre.com/hr-dashboard-gantt-chart-traffic-light-reportIt has a similar approach with scroll bars, but has a couple of additional features. I've tried to incorporate a traffic light report element, and also allow the timescale to adjusted so that can view it by days, weeks or months.I really like the other tables that you've incorporated, I may well try to replicate them to improve my version!
I am a monitoring and evaluation consultant in international development, and one of the services I offer is to help non-profits and foundations develop performance dashboards. I often advise them to develop dashboards for ongoing programs, rather than for one-time or pilot projects, because of the time involved. I am trying to find out from a few people how long it takes you to develop a project management dashboard, and to what extent the indicators vary from one project to the next.