Data Authors: Skilled Designers of Data Presentations - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 122

full breakout detail for the metric. Figure 5-34 shows an interface for Datran
Media's Aperture online advertising dashboard that demonstrates this model:
Figure 5-34: This interface reveals more detailed information as the user selects what they are interested in.
Guide Attention
It isn't good enough to make the information available; you need to use visual
cues and functionality to draw the user to the things that matter most. A few
mechanisms that can help are alerts, positioning on the page, and careful use
of color and fonts. The visualization in Figure 5-35 emphasizes those metrics
that need attention.
Support Casual use
Minimize the barrier to entry for new users by avoiding feature overload,
minimizing clicks for each task, and providing clear, concise descriptions of
what things mean. The data interface we designed for network usage high-
lights only the most important metrics, uses a parallel structure to delineate
between upstream and downstream data, and has a simple visual to show
the largest values, as shown in Figure 5-36.