What are BANs? Are they a way to get banned from Twitter? From the movies? The coffee shop?
No , they are some Big Ass Numbers. They should be BIG, they should be numbers and they of course should support your data story and viz with meaning.
For some views and dashboards to communicate, you may have a few key datapoints, call them KPIs or OKRs if you like. They often represent a headline concept, or key piece of data someone (or everyone) in your audience wants to see instantly. Don’t risk them being missed in a chart – though a chart that can answer any why question is useful. Put them up front and Center, and big so they can see.
Made money in the quarter – BAN. Beating the SLA – BAN. Website traffic down – BAN. BAN the numbers in a highly viewable way to answer the first question that your audience cares about.
How do I apply, lets check version 3 of that tracking sheet. My waffle grid is cool, it has the numbers there to see and a pattern that helps a viewer make a very quick percentage completed assessment. But it also makes you do some mental work, if say you want to know the exact %, or just how many posts have been made. Let’s BAN those for ease of use, they might be the info your really want to see.
There we go, once I post this post and update the data, I’ll have a bit more progress, which my BANs will give me a super quick view I need. I can use the waffle chart to see things, approximate the postings and progress – believe me, there will be a great sense of satisfaction as the squares all turn green (more than just the % number going up).
So many more ways to improve a viz exist, however I think its time to start off a new series. I’ve learned lots posting the first set – like how much goes into a simple viz to share, that I’ll try out a series of posts along a theme and build like this to tell the story, make the topics digestible bite sized posts and that I will likely need to keep the different Tableau dashboards and data separate for each one, to avoid updates messing up an early post.
Give BANs a try on your next viz, comment below how they go.
Vizology 