A Design Problem

I found this graph in Business Objects' user documentation. It served as an example of 3-D bar graphs. Business Objects is a leading business intelligence software vendor. Take a moment and try to interpret the data.

Our Analysis

Notice the following problems in the example above:

• The 3-D bars are impossible to read.
• The heavy grid lines offer nothing but distraction.
• The vertically-oriented labels (i.e., the resort names and years) are difficult to read.
• The years run from back to front, which is counter-intuitive.

A Solution

It took me 15 minutes to do my best to guess the dollar amounts of the bars, then five minutes to create the following alternative:

This graph eliminates the use of 3-D altogether, which almost never works in business graphs. Also notice the other following improvements:

• The bright bar colors have been replaced with variations in gray-scale, thereby guarantying that this graph will still work if it is photocopied or printed on a black-and-white printer.
• The three resorts have been arranged in order of rank, based on revenue, to highlight their comparative performance.
• The years have been arranged from left to right, which is intuitive.
• The legend has been placed above the bars, in the same sequence as the bars, to ease the process of matching them up.