Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
of displaying large amounts of abstract information for high-flying
decision-makers in finance and other industries. The seeds of that
collaborative venture were to grow into an eventual long-term partnership,
which included William Wright and another young architect, Thomas
Kapler.
Intheearlydaysofthisventureintobusinessvisualization, thevalueofeven
primitive charts was not always widely understood or accepted in offices
of Fortune 500 companies. Our first pitches to corporate decision-makers
started with the most basic of value propositions—that of the value of
visualization itself. The pitch started with a slide presenting a small table of
numbers and a challenge to the executives in the room to describe patterns.
The next slide followed with the same numbers shown in a line chart.
Visualized, patterns were immediately clear. In the table, the patterns were
clearly not. That basic principle was the foundation for extrapolating how
visualization could be even more essential in gaining insights from data that
was orders of magnitude bigger and more complex.
At that time, the use of computers for primitive charting was still in its
infancy, and beyond that, a product industry for analyzing business data
visually was (by and large) yet to be born. What little advanced work that
was going on was confined to a handful of corporate research labs and
start-ups. Business was uncharted territory, in all senses of the word.
In those early days, one of the obstacles to the adoption of visualization in
the business world was the limited graphic capabilities of computer systems
at the time. When Edward Tufte's topic
Envisioning Information
(Cheshire,
CT: Graphics Press, 1990) was published, best-practice examples in the
industry were still print-based, and the case studies in his seminal design
topic were no exception.The average computer was still far behind in quality
of display.
WhenwehitthestreetsofNewYorkintheearly1990swithnovelinteractive
3-D demos for financial analysts and traders, they had nearly a hundred
pounds of specialized hardware in tow. Powering a single system required a
hefty Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) computer and monitor. Between wrestling
the equipment in and out of taxi trunks, and careening it down city
sidewalks on rickety, collapsible hand carts, it didn't take long before a new
machine received its first patch of duct tape.
