Edward Tufte’s Slopegraphs
This is pretty darn cool. Charlie Park details Slopegraphs, a chart format that Edward Tufte developed for his book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Unlike sparklines, another chart format Tufte developed, these never really took hold.
Back in 2004, Edward Tufte defined and developed the concept of a “sparkline”. Odds are good that — if you’re reading this — you’re familiar with them and how popular they’ve become.
What’s interesting is that over 20 years before sparklines came on the scene, Tufte developed a different type of data visualization that didn’t fare nearly as well. To date, in fact, I’ve only been able to find three examples of it, and even they aren’t completely in line with his vision.
It’s curious that it hasn’t become more popular, as the chart type is quite elegant and aligns with all of Tufte’s best practices for data visualization, and was created by the master of information design. Why haven’t these charts (christened “slopegraphs” by Tufte about a month ago) taken off the way sparklines did?
Well worth a read if you care about stuff like this.
Edward Tufte Profile
Joshua Yaffa profiles Edward Tufte, one of my personal heros, for The Washington Monthly.
After the publication of Envisioning Information, Tufte decided, he told me, “to be indifferent to culture or history or time.” He became increasingly consumed with what he calls “forever knowledge,” or the idea that design is meant to guide fundamental cognitive tasks and therefore is rooted in principles that apply regardless of the material being displayed and the technology used to produce it. As Tufte explains it, basic human cognitive questions are universal, which means that design questions should be universal too. “I purposely don’t write books with names like How to Design a Web Site or How to Make a Presentation,” he told me.
Infographic: State Of B2B Social Media
IDG Enterprise via Mashable has some very telling numbers about the current state and the future of social media for buisness-to-business firms.
One report found that only 32% of B2B companies engage with their customers on a daily basis via social media. Another discovered that 46% of B2B marketers thought social media was irrelevant. And another found that 60% of B2B firms have no staff dedicated to social media and just 10% of B2B firms use outside agencies or consultants. While the vast majority (86%) of B2B companies use social media for marketing, it’s clear there’s considerable room for improvement.
Increased online investment is one sign of change. Forrester Research is betting that interactive spending will double from 2009 to 2014 to total $54 million. While it’s not clear how much of that money will go into social media, the report was bullish on the new tools provided they’re used correctly.
Wow, only 10% use an outside agency or consultants and 60% have no staff dedicated to social media. Looks like I need to be doing a little more business development in this area.
