Saturday 11 July 2015

Invisible servants

The King woke in the morning and stretched. The sun streamed through the opened curtains.

He eased out of bed straight into his waiting slippers and dressing gown.

He made his way into his bathroom and eased himself into the bath - which was at just the right temperature for him.

After he dried off, using perfectly warmed towels, he made his way to his dressing room to don his pressed trousers and freshly ironed shirt.

He wandered down to the breakfast room to sit down in front of the exact breakfast that he wanted. Laid beside his breakfast plate was the days letters. Of course, only the ones of interest to him were there, there was no junk.



A lovely story, but what is missing? Of course, it is the servants. The servant who opened the curtains at the right time. The servant who laid out the slippers and dressing gown. The servant who prepared the bath at exactly the right temperature.

What on earth has this got to do with data visualization???

It has everything to do with data visualization! Your data visualization needs to be the servants. Your users are the King. The servants should present the right data in the right way so that the King doesn't even realize that the servants are there!

Remember your ink-to-data ratio and let the data dominate.

Let your servants fade into the background and crown your users.


Stephen Redmond is a Data Visualization professional. He is author of Mastering QlikView, QlikView Server and Publisher and the QlikView for Developer's Cookbook
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