Teaching talk:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2009/10 - Gruppe 10 - Aufgabe 2

Critic

Style critic

1. The lines in the table are to heavy and seperate the data too much. Furthermore the visual flow is disturbed by them.
2. Numbers are not aligned properly
3. The www column doesn't stand out from the other columns

Data critic:

1. The title is missing and so it's difficult to guess the table's subject.
2. Normalize data units, to make it comprehensible for people, who are not familiar with the conversion of units
3. Header Titles are too long and not understandable
4. The order of the row headers don't support the comprehension of the information

Corrections

1. Lines:
   We deleted most of the lines, because they disturbed the visual flow, i.e. the lines separated the data to much.
   We just kept the line between the first and the second row to separate the headings from the data and the line between the single items of spyware and the sum of them. We designed this lines light-gray to make a soft visible separation, to support the visual flow.
   
   
2. Changing of the row order:
   We changed the order of the former rows in order to reach a better content-based correlation of the data.
   
   
3. Transpose the table: Because the study is focused on the former row headers, the former column headers show partial results of the observed data
   
   
4. “total bytes transferred” column header (former row header):
   We converted all the data in this column/row to MB to achieve a better comparability.
   We changed the heading from “total bytes transferred” in “total MB transferred”
   We deleted the unit information beside numerical data, as it was no longer necessary after the unification and because unit is already mentioned in the heading.
   
   
5. ) new row header: We inserted a row called “Total Spyware”, which gives an overview of the affection within the network, and makes it comparable to the WWW-row. The numbers of this row can reach higher amounts than the ones in the WWW row, because one computer can be infected by more than one spyware. We inserted the row especially for comparing the general data-traffic with the one generated by spyware.
   
   
6. We also inserted a general heading to make it clear, what the table is about.
   
   
7. We enframed the table to separate the data from the header. If the table is surrounded by text the data can still be conceived well without distracting the reader’s eyes.
   
   
8. We enlarged the distance between the WWW-row and the following rows to make it more obvious, that the WWW-row gives a general overview of the university network data, whereas the other rows show specific information due to a certain spyware infection within this network, respectively the total sum of them.