Visualizing Streaming Data

Chapter 2. Goals

This chapter focuses on what goals will drive you in which directions for the rest of the book. Defining what you are trying to accomplish from a high level gives you a context in which to think about the rest of the information.

Given the scope of data that people are looking at, what kinds of insights are they trying to gather that justify watching a screen of data for any length of time? Possibilities include the following:

• A significant pattern that can be intuitively found by a person but that would be difficult to predict ahead of time to develop into an application

• Something anomalous that would justify an immediate action (this assumes the person has a decent understanding of the common patterns)

• Security-related events above a certain threshold of risk

• Knowing when something has passed a status threshold, or is trending toward it

• An understanding of the evolution of the data over time

• Monitoring complex, automated decisions as they occur.

• Operational intelligence insights for faster reaction time.

Presentation Goals

Visualizations can have different goals, purposes, and intended audiences. Broadly, they fall into three categories: sales, reports, and analytics. Depending on the goal, use of streaming visualizations can be more or less effective. Table 2-1 compares the different presentation goals and considerations.

Table 2-1. Visualization ...