Spotfire UI Checklist

Below are screen shots of the same analysis, One before I went thru my checklist and one after.. A basic checklist I always go thru before I call it a day on any analysis ..I am sure all of you seasoned Spotfire users do this all the time..but keeping it here to help new Spotfire users ...... I would love to hear other things you do to make your analytic application a great user experience... 

Lead to action : Analytics and fancy pictures are useless if user does not know what are possible action items for him at the end. Keep that as a goal. Action can be inferred in a single chart or may need series of charts. Understand goals of every chart, every workflow.

Simple things can take you a long way

1) Legends 

Legends are powerful. They bring context to the chart you are looking at. But lot of times authors leave it to default and they show information that may not help. Simple cleanup will prevent an author from overwhelming the user with unwanted data. For e.g if your end user does not need to know what Data Table is used or how the chart is limited then hide the datatable, limiting, marking items.

Update from Community feedback

Get rid of legends fully by always having consistent colors across charts, and then storing the colour key in a text area (possibly as a small image). Again this gives you more space, and can really help with pie charts.

2) Legend Axis Selectors 

If your end user is not going to change axis, then generally its good to hide the axis selectors. In the charts properties dialog on legend section where you select legend items to show, make sure you select/unselect the hide/unhide items..as needed....like axis selectors & titles..

If you are providing text area property controls to change any axis (color, x, y, shape, size) I would recommend just hiding the selector and then just showing the title and values.

3) Chart Axis Selectors 

If the end user is not going to change Axes, then it may be worth not showing the axis selector. 

4) Filters 

Filters should be given thorough thoughts. Spotfire technology makes it easily possible to use any of your data columns for filtering. Really Really powerful feature.

But not necessarily every column is something that the user will use for filter. So spend some thought

You will be surprised to know that many users follow a thought hierarchy when filtering, e.g. first them may filter out products and then focus on geography or it could be the other way round. But the key here is if you know the hierarchy based on user interaction use that. Group Filters as needed to make it easier to find the filters.

Update from Community feedback

Remove the filter panel, and put any filters into a text area - this fit the left to right flow, and doesn't waste screen space (like having view filters turned on and only displaying a couple of filters)

5) Chart Titles 

Use good Titles if you plan to use Titles. Especially if you are introducing a new analytic application a title is probably the first place user looks at. If your chart changes dynamically based on property controls then use the property in the title or description. 

Update from Community

1) Chart titles can be truncated if too long, so use the description field instead, this is formatable and can hold variables such as the axis names.

6) Overall Layouts. 

This is the most common workflow, top-left to bottom right that I have seen works in any application. Spotfire's powerful ability to brush link charts and one click drill downs into detailed charts makes it a great tool for exploratory analytics. So if you are doing basic dash boarding or even guided workflow try to stick top left to right and top to down approach.

7) Window Size 

Spotfire has a great fluid layout engine when it comes to viewing. It fits to your window by default and resizes based on different screen sizes. Each Chart can be re sized independently. But it is still a good practice to not jam in too many charts on one page. If you really need to put more than 4-5 chart per page, consider resizing your visualization area size to increase the height. Users are very comfortable with North-South Scrolling.

8) Tabs 

If your Analytic workflow takes user from one tab to another consider using text area links in your workflow to help user navigate from one page to other.

9) Axis Display Names 

Use Axis Display names to make user friendly DisplayNames. A visible expression will deviate the user thoughts into the expression rather than the the actual Analytic's. Use acronyms that you know are popularly known. Please do not invent your own.

10) Formatting 

Use number formatting, comma separators, appropriate number of decimal point as the use case needs. Make it easy for the user to understand the data without having to count zero's & commas

Update from Community
Make the y axis lables relevant. Dont use too many, reduce to 5-6 visible y axis labels.
Format the numbers corecty and use Currency symbols where appropriate.
Incrase the standard font size.
Get rid of unnecessary colorings, if the colors are not unique anymore, you have to find another way otherwise it could cause misinterpretation.

11) Text Areas

The example does not show one, but text area is your best friend. Add notes, guides, links to other internal /external systems if need be. If users need to find something from outside very often a simple link in the same window can help user satisfaction a lot

12) Pie Charts (Community Feedback)
Use pie charts with 2 sectors, 3 tops. No point of a pie chart where each sector is very small and there is no way a human eye can understand the difference in the sector Size

13) Iterate : Some of tricks here work some don't in some cases.. So iteration is the key .... like with any other project that you will do.