Visualizing Streaming Data

Preface

Several things converged to lead me to write this book. I’m a huge science-fiction nerd. I fell in love with fantasy user interfaces—the interfaces in movies and TV shows, often used as plot devices. When they are well done, they fit the needs of the actors perfectly—at a glance immediately conveying a status, a transition, and then a new status. I looked for years for kits to help me make real interfaces that were more like these. As I got better at programming, I realized that it always makes sense to specifically design an interface for an aesthetic and a plot instead of relying on a general working toolkit that is themed. I resigned myself to the fact that the kit I was looking for wouldn’t be forthcoming.

As I broke down fantasy user interfaces into common components and logic, I realized they weren’t that complex, and lots of the components would be universally useful. These fantasy UIs did break a lot of rules, though. In order to show transitions in a plot, they show things changing. Data streams in and impacts the status. Entire sections move or transform in ways we typically would not do in a dashboard. The conventional wisdom on dashboards by people like Stephen Few is that they should convey status at a glance. That can be difficult to do when everything is moving and transforming simultaneously. There is real value outside the defined conventional wisdom on what to do for dashboards; it just fits a different need. If we quit comparing our interfaces to a dashboard ...