Kaizen may be the the art of continuous improvement, but today we’re happy to showcase the art of discontinuous improvement. In one big bang, we’re introducing a new logo, a new website, and a new platform to deliver web services and tools to make your life better.

The new logo is the product of months of pixel pushing and brainstorming. I’ll detail the evolution of the logo in a future post, but for the moment I’ll leave you with a comparison of the old and new logos.

old Juice logo
new Juice logo

The website redesign is an effort to improve the “discoverability” of our site. Good articles were mouldering in the archives. It was hard to find old or popular articles. Search was barely existent. A follow up article will trace the evolution of the site design.

We built the new site using Python and Django. This is a dynamic platform that gives us a lot of power to add new features, tools, and applications. We’re excited about what we will be able to bring you—we have a whiteboard full of ideas just awaiting implementation.

The new site, while better, isn’t perfect. Despite our efforts, there may be links that don’t work or screencasts that neither screen nor cast. We'd love to hear your reaction to the new design. Please leave a comment to tell us what you think or if you find anything that's broken. We'll fix it right away. With your help, we’ll make this site and this community better in a process of continuous improvement—Kaizen.

We've gotten a lot of positive comments about the design. I wanted to thank rockbeatspaper, the web design consultants who worked with us to create this site. A great company and a terrific job.

We all know at least one GUI Jock. That one guy who knows how to, say, run a complex query on the content management system, or export data from the annoying sales database front-end or actually get new data into what qualifies as "the system" where you work. He is a master of tools that appear obscure, but are in fact just a pain in the neck. He is not writing firmware for the space shuttle; he is changing the background gradients in your marketing dashboard.

The GUI Jock is a paradoxical figure. Indispensable and yet undervalued, he owes his livelihood to the ferocity of the beast he tames. The sheer number and complexity of pull-down menus, check-boxes, obscure options, software bugs, and poor user interface choices created by an external software vendor. The GUI Jock conquers them all—he is a human compiler who receives requests in the loose and informal language of the outsider and compiles them to the standards demanded by expensive enterprise software.

But how did he find himself in this position? Ironically, he may have fallen into this unfortunate role by being good at a few ad hoc requests which he likely completed under the assumption that he would soon be moving on to more interesting work. But now he is stuck in a trap that he helped build and of which others are afraid. He is there to fall on the grenade that is lousy software, poor documentation, and bad process so the rest of the organization can go about its job without another hassle. The GUI Jock suffers so we do not.

What can be done?

In my experience the GUI Jock is usually not happy with his lot. If you know him you are probably aware that he can be a grouch and he has probably sighed in your presence more than once (if you don't know him, he might be you). But can we set him free?

A typical response is training. Grab a conference room for a few hours, set up a projector and show the junior staff just how to hold that chair while taming the beast known as the "InsiteDynaMetrix CollaboStream(tm)". The juniors sit and nod, happy to have such a big block of their day accounted for. In my experience, the success rate of this approach is woefully low. It can backfire, basically serving to train attendees to know who exactly the GUI Jock is and that they should funnel all relevant requests directly to his inbox.

To protect itself, the organization demands that the GUI Jock stay in his role. He is the only person who will save himself. He has a few options:

• Sucker a new employee into the role. New employees are eager to please and crave the recognition of value that comes with being a GUI Jock. They are also too naive to see the quicksand.
• Increase the friction for people who lean on him. Ask for forms to be filled out, demand detailed requirements, and delay in delivering results. With enough process, these people may decide to serve themselves.
• Apply to graduate school.

Population Estimates Data Sets

US census data

Are you generic? / Wilson Miner Live

Wilson Miners post re: Django's generic views

We've been thinking a lot about user experience for information-intensive applications. We ran across a passionate and insightful essay on the topic by Bret Victor entitled Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface.

Bret notes that people can use software to learn, to create, or to communicate. His concern is with learning-oriented tools, and the misguided approaches used by software designers in creating these applications:

"Information software serves the human urge to learn. A person uses information software to construct and manipulate a model that is internal to the mind—a mental representation of information. Good information software encourages the user to ask and answer questions, make comparisons, and draw conclusions...Much current software fulfilling these needs presents mechanical metaphors and objects to manipulate, but this is deceiving. People using this software do not care about these artificial objects; they care about seeing information and understanding choices—manipulating a model in their heads...

...For example, consider calendar or datebook software. Many current designs center around manipulating a database of “appointments,” but is this really what a calendar is for? To me, it is about combining, correlating, and visualizing a vast collection of information.

He arrives at the conclusion that information software design is fundamentally the same process as information graphic design.

"[Infographics] almost compel the viewer to ask and answer questions, make comparisons, and draw conclusions. It does so by exploiting the capabilities of the human eye: instantaneous and effortless movement, high bandwidth and capacity for parallel processing, intrinsic pattern recognition and correlation, a macro/micro duality that can skim a whole page or focus on the tiniest detail. Meanwhile, a graphic sidesteps human shortcomings: the one-dimensional, uncontrollable auditory system, the relatively sluggish motor system, the mind’s limited capacity to comprehend hidden mechanisms. A graphic presents no mechanisms to comprehend or manipulate—it plugs directly into the mind’s spatial reasoning centers."

This focus is in contrast with the typical approach used to design information software (I think we can safely say this applies to business intelligence software in particular):

"Many software designers feel they are designing a machine. Their foremost concern is behavior—what the software does. They start by asking: What functions must the software perform? What commands must it accept? What parameters can be adjusted? These designers start by specifying functionality, but the essence of information software is the presentation...

...The foremost concern should be appearance—what and how information is presented. The designer should ask: What is relevant information? What questions will the viewer ask? What situations will she want to compare? What decision is she trying to make? How can the data be presented most effectively? How can the visual vocabulary and techniques of graphic design be employed to direct the user’s eyes to the solution? The designer must start by considering what the software looks like, because the user is using it to learn, and she learns by looking at it."

He goes on to highlight the importance of using context to present the most relevant information at the right time. You want to consider the user—who they are and what they want to learn. Context can come from the environment (place, time, other related documents), history (last action, pattern of actions), or user interaction. The natural reaction for many software designers is to rely on user interaction. That is another underlying problem in Bret's view:

"Information software mimics the experience of reading, not working. It is used for achieving an understanding—constructing a model within the mind. Thus, the user must listen to the software and think about what it says… but any manipulation happens mentally. The only reason to complete the full interaction cycle and speak is to explicitly provide some context that the software can’t otherwise infer—that is, to indicate a relevant subset of information. For information software, all interaction is essentially navigation around a data space."

Information software interaction itself is fraught with problems. Specifically, the user:

• has to know what she wants
• has to know how to ask
• can get lost in the navigation process
• has to physically manipulate the computer to express her need

The essay offers a number of examples from Bret's work to demonstrate the use of context, visual information display, and judicious use of interaction. In addition, he offers thoughts on how to fix these problems. Worth a read if you want to understand why you've developed a tic working with your BI reporting interface.

We got a great response to our previous post about building a language for data analysts. Thank you all for sharing. Attribution is in parentheses next to the terms. We can keep adding to this resources as new idea come in.

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abracadata (Jamel): Data with no little or no validity.

analycide (flipsockgrrl): Death by navel-gazing.

atomic baloney slicer: Massive and complex enterprise software solution that attempts to do more than is necessary to solve the problem.

bitpicking (Jay): Carefully choosing data to create the most favorable impression.

cackulating (flipsockgrrl): The process of producing laughable statistics.

crossflab (Jamel): An unnecessary cross tabulation or pivot table.

chart-based encryption: A chart that has managed to fully mask the message of the data through poor design.

chartjunk: Popularized by Edward Tufte, “unnecessary or confusing visual elements in charts and graphs. Markings and visual elements can be called chartjunk if they are not part of the minimum set of visuals necessary to communicate the information understandably.” [Wikipedia]

dancing baloney (Bill): Any animated chartjunk that draws the eye away from focal data.

data storehouse (Jamel): The part of a data warehouse that no one ever uses.

defart (Teresa): Charts that are left with the default Excel formatting. A.k.a. commando charts (Aaron)

documentate (flipsockgrrl): to write down the results of your cogitation, not because you thought of anything particularly brilliant, but because your boss is impressed by wads of paperwork.

dysfactia (flipsockgrrl): an inability to recall or quote numbers accurately (coined by David Weinberger in 2003).

enterprise data bean (Jamel): A single piece of data extracted from an enterprise data system.

execuhole: A senior manager who requests analysis and reporting but doesn’t appear to read, comprehend, or otherwise absorb the information.

flufferpoint (Winthrop Hayes): A presentation that attempts to distract from the lack of substantive content or evidence with use of screenbeans, clip art, and other stock pictures or illustrations. A.k.a. clipterfuge (Todd Moy), clusterpoint (Cathy), The Macy’s Data Day Fluff Parade (Jamel)

frankensheet (Dermot via Rob Bruce): A spreadsheet that has grown organically to become thoroughly incomprehensible outside of the mind of the owner. A.k.a. single-user solution (Kruncher), creepsheet (Darrell)

mental gymnasties (flipsockgrrl): the arithmetical problem that’s too embarrassingly simple to borrow a calculator for, but too hard to do in your head.

pimp my chart: The process of creating reports, dashboards or individual charts that have a shiny surfaces, 3-D elements, and other exaggerated design elements. Related to chartjunk. Pimped-up charts are sometimes mistakenly presented as well-designed executive dashboards.

Quack-Scholes (Todd Moy): A situation when someone describes a series of complex-sounding statistical techniques (e.g. multi-variate logistic regression, cluster analysis, ANOVA) in an attempt to impress others. A.k.a. quant-dropping (Aaron), bullstat (Winthrop Hayes)

reporticane (Winthrop Hayes): An organizational problem where there is an excessive number of reports being generated and little understanding of the purpose. A.k.a. blackhole reporting (Kruncher), reportiferation (Cathy)

sheetcake (Jay): Excessive use of color and formatting.

sociomath (flipsockgrrl): someone who derives intense pleasure from public calculation, e.g. working out how much of the restaurant bill each member of the group should pay.

spreadalanche (Winthrop Hayes): A data file with more than 65,536 rows, thus making it impossible to load in Excel versions prior to Excel 2007. A.k.a. truncated (Dermot), Spreadache (Jay)

spreadhead/spreadgeek (Derek/Andy): A person who uses spreadsheets to do everything, even complicated statistics or things that others would use a database or BI program for.

statrat (Jamel): A person who uses statistics software to do everything, even simple arithmetic.

upgrade (Michael): When users are forced to migrate from a system that is capable of producing the required reports to a system that is not capable of producing those reports.

you sunk my battleship: When someone requests a meeting time that conflicts with one of only a few events you have on your calendar.

Attorneys like to use phrases like "res ipsa loquitor" and "crimes of moral turpitude." Doctors talk about pharyngitis and rhinorrhea rather than sore throats and runny noses. Language can give an aura