Mario Herger posted on the topic of data visualization the other day and emphasized how important it is to bring out the salient aspects of a data set and to not go overboard with the visualization methods available nowadays.
While I'm wary also of how meaningful data can be obscured by fancy visualization methods, I couldn't help letting my imagination go about an interactive data 'sketch' Ben Fry recently put up on his site. This data representation is fun to use and it looks great. It just confirms how mode of presentation remains an important part of inviting a user to look at data and to help the user make sense of it. Take a look.
The breakdown of Ben's particular visualization for baseball team rankings may be summed up as follows: constants on the right are tied to an element on the left where the elements on the left are sorted according to some criterium. In Ben's example the figures on the right show the payroll of baseball teams and the listing on the left shows the ranking of each team on a given date. If a team's ranking sits higher or on the same level as its relative payroll then the team's logo is tied to its payroll with a blue line; otherwise the line is red.
So here we have relative positioning and color (as well as the thickness of the connector) helping us make a judgement about whether or not a team's payroll is justified.
What makes the visualization even more compelling is the interactive aspect of it. By moving through the timeline one can very easily see how the rankings are changing relative to payroll as the season carries on.
Here are a few simple examples of how this model might be applied to present HCM related data (including a timeline at the top):
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