Bullet Charts in Cognos with SpotOn Vantage
Posted by Mark Mallany on Thu, May 13, 2010
Hello Everyone,
I have recently been reading Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few. It looks at dashboard design, specifically how to present your data to optimized the dashboards usefullness. If you would like more information on Stephen Few or his writings you can find it here http://www.perceptualedge.com/
In Information Dashboard Design, Stephen Few presents a interesting new graph that "achieves the communication objective without the problems that usually plague guages and meters". The Bullet graph presents a lot of data in one compact visual display that is easily intrepeted.
Luckily vCharts allows you to quickly configure Bullet Graphs in few short steps.
- Set your Target ( the dash)
- Set your Value ( the bar)
- Set your Color Ranges ( Background Colors) -these can be both dynamically based on your data set or set manually in Chart Studio.
The only thing left to do is set up your colors and margins just as you want them. In the following example you will see that you can get a lot of data in one Graph.
A quick description of the data in the Chart
- The Target (Vertical Dash) is projected Revenue
- The Value (Horizontal Bar) is the actual Revenue
- Color Ranges
- Darkest Blue indicates the Gross Profit
- Middle Blue indicated the Production Cost
- Lightest Blue just a background color.
If you want more info on Bullet Graphs or more information of Stephen Few and his methodolgies or writings, check out http://www.perceptualedge.com/