Few in Review
Dealer Diagnostics traveled to Boston, June 24 – 26, to attend Stephen Few’s three day data visualization training, The 2008 East Coast Visual Business Intelligence Workshop.
Has the business intelligence field been more successful at building expectations or falling short of them? This question will cause any professional in the industry to pause for thought. When your correspondent had the opportunity to travel to Boston to take part in a three day data visualization workshop lead by dashboard guru Stephen Few, it was easy to imagine that the only happy ending might be a half-dozen oysters at the Union Oyster Bar and maybe a trip to Fenway. As a long-time reader of Few, the skeptic in me couldn’t help but imagine sitting through three days of material that was well covered in his existing books. Fortunately, that’s exactly what it was.
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
– George Orwell
His first words were “What I’m going to show you today is not complex.” And it’s not, everyone in attendance knew it. Most in the class had read his books or at least his blog and newsletter and knew that this stuff isn’t rocket science–just bars, lines and tables. Would we be spending the workshop learning things that we already knew?
The workshops structured each day as a separate course, each priced at $350.
Day 1: Table and Graph Design for Effective Communication was based on his first book, Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten.
Day 2: Dashboard Design for at a Glance Monitoring was based on his second book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.
Day 3: Visual Data Analysis for Discovery and Understanding was based on third, soon to be released, book, Now you See It.
While the material separation may have been useful to those with scheduling, budget issues or a narrow interest in presenting data in a table, it seemed unnecessary as almost everyone attended all three days. Each day was structured with a morning of lecture based theory, including a small group exercise, followed by additional afternoon theory and an interactive activity with the entire class. Few used many of the same examples that he presents in his books in addition to a few charts and dashboard examples that have been developed since each book’s publishing. However, if the message had any chance of being lost in familiarity, he brought it back again and again.
Stephen Few is an outstanding presenter. If he doesn’t already have a reputation as one of the best educators in the field, he’s certainly on his way to building it. Clearly, concisely and ever-so-smoothly Few walked a class of 65 through three days of his material without notes. His pacing and delivery were superb as was his ability to interact with the audience.
Each morning he covered basic theory and then offered the chance to critique poorly executed graphs and dashboards from software vendors. Just when the class was beginning to feel arrogant, Few would split the class into small groups and ask us to redesign a deceptive graph or misleading dashboard. There was more than one group thinking, “wait a minute, I was an expert in this a minute ago. Now what do I do?” Once Few had us back in the lecture hall and reviewed the exercise, you could sense the “aha” moments around the room when what we thought were familiar concepts became deeper insights.
At the end of each day, Few asked the class, “was anything I covered today complex?”, as a not so subtle reminder of where we had started with all of the data and limited insight.
Days earlier we walked into the workshop knowing everything Few was going to present yet after looking at samples of our work we realized that we had not learned many of the lessons: dashboards were complex enough to sell the idea to the boss, but all too often failed on the basics–choosing an appropriate color to best aid perception for instance or reducing graphical clutter, however brilliantly conceived by an analyst.
Few, with his mantra of simplicity, helped focus even the most experienced mind on improving the basics and letting the data tell its story.
8 Responses to “Few in Review”
Great recap. You nailed the three days we spent with Stephen Few.
Before going to Boston, I only knew Dealer Diagnostics from Twitter. I really got the know the team after the first full day ended as those really serious about Few’s teaching stayed late and asked questions or showed off our work to Mr. Few and each other. That one plus hour each evening was among some of the best time spent at the workshop. I really enjoyed hearing of your latest work and viewing it live on your laptop.
I am looking forward to keeping the dialog alive as we move forward.
@dmgerbino
By David Gerbino on Jul 1, 2008
Dave – You’re too kind. I actually wish there were more guys like you out there exploring the frontiers of data visualization and technology. There’s a lot of rabbit holes and a lot of opportunity out there and you’re one of the few guys I’ve met who is able to keep up and sort through it all.
We’ll see you on the wire.
By DDR Admin on Jul 1, 2008
One thing I think that would have helped the experience is some opportunity to learn what tools/lessons/etc. other groups had learned during the trek through the BI world. I suggested to Few that he do a running survey in his seminars where he gathers data from among the attendees including what framework(s) they use, whether they are developing something internally or externally, etc. I know that no one in the room seemed to know of the tool we use (for now) and we know nothing about some of the more popular ones being mentioned by others. We all work in silos and that’s not good.
Which means I appreciate your effort here.
Ultimately, the value of the course for us was forcing us to think of these issues with someone nudging us along for two days. For some organizations, I wonder if it would be more cost effective to have him come visit?
Keep up the good work.
By Chip Hart on Jul 2, 2008
Very nice summary! I really enjoyed meeting you guys in Boston.
I don’t think most people realize how difficult it is to design an effective dashboard. It can be a very painful process. Having to explain to someone who knows absolutely nothing about data visualization why you didn’t use a ’speedometer’ or why there are no big green dots on the things that are normal can be frustrating. It was great to be able to exchange ideas with others facing the same struggles.
Keep in touch.
By Michael Gaffney on Jul 2, 2008
Great synopsis of the workshops. I knew I’d learn a lot from Stephen Few, but he is much more approachable than I expected. While his books, newsletters, and website must speak to a broad audience, Few is definitely more pragmatic than academic. The chance to meet the man behind the curtain and dig deeper into his theory made the three day investment all the more worthwhile.
The key learning was the reminders avoid dazzling the audience with glossy presentations and to focus on content. To echo your comments above: deliver the message – status and performance metrics – clearly and concisely.
Best to all and stay in touch.
By Peter Walker on Jul 2, 2008
An excellent summary of the three days.
I want to raise an issue I had with his day three presentation on data analysis for discovery and understanding. I think in some of his examples (like the coffee example) the data was too subtle to effectively demonstrate the technique he was trying to show. I feel it was not possible to tell if there had been a real increase or decrease in sales. Every set of data contains a low value and a high value. That doesn’t mean that those values are different from the rest of the data set.
When analyzing data there are two basic types of errors you can make. (1) Thinking there has been a change in your process when in fact there has not been a change, and (2) thinking there has not been a change when in fact there has been a change. Unless the data is very obvious, trying to “eyeball it” like we were doing in some of the examples is just not the right way to do it. On slide 55 he showed examples of highlighting acceptable ranges of data. That was a good start, but he didn’t spend time on how to determine the acceptable range (hint: using specifications or goals is wrong).
I know this was not a statistics course and most of the attendees were probably builders of dashboards and not the people doing data analysis. I come from the latter group as you probably guessed by now. But the basic statistical tools you can apply to this type of data are pretty simple. If you are interested I suggest two books by Donald J. Wheeler (www.spcpress.com). The first is a simple 150 page one called “Understanding Variation”. It’s kind of like an executive summary. The other is a more comprehensive tome called “Making Sense of Data”. Making Sense of Data actually covers a lot of the same topics as Stephen. Even though there is a lot of statistics and math in it, I think it is a very readable book. I highly recommend it if you really want to learn this stuff.
I hope this didn’t come off as anti Stephen. I think he’s brilliant and have been reading him for a long time. I just think he is making a mistake by leaving the math out of his data analysis.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to rant.
By Andrew Torchia on Jul 2, 2008
Thanks for the comments everyone. It turns out there has already been a few people that have found the review useful, the folks at http://xlcubed.com/ have included this post in their July newsletter to help anyone thinking about attending Few’s next conference in San Francisco.
By DDR Admin on Jul 16, 2008