Dealing with complex data

Timeline slider

The timeline slider pattern uses the slider to control the features that correspond to a certain time span. Timeline slider reduces the amount of data to display by showing only the data within that time span.

Chart marker

WHAT The chart marker pattern uses charts to enrich aggregated data or to visualize a second attribute of clustered data. Adding tiny charts to the map is a powerful visualization technique to communicate additional aspects of the data. WHY It’s easy to symbolize a single observation through color, shape, or size, but as soon as […]

Theme toggle

WHAT The map is overloaded with layers and users struggle to reduce the clutter WHY Interactive maps are collections of layers and each layer that is turned on adds to visual information to the map and if any one of those layers isn’t required or desired it can be considered clutter to the user. Being […]

Choropleth map

WHAT Visualize how a measurement varies across a geographic area. WHY Choropleth maps provide an easy way to visualize how a measurement varies across a geographic area or show the level of variability within a region. WHEN Choropleth maps are important to support analysis across pre-defined geographic area, e.g. an election map divided by electoral […]

Feature selection

WHAT The feature selection pattern uses selected features on the map to create a subset from all the available features. It helps shift the focus from the whole collection of features to the ones that are relevant. WHY Selecting items is a common input mechanism to gain further insights into the associated data. The goal […]

Cluster marker

WHAT The cluster marker pattern is a common method to avoid visual clutter by grouping points together, and many apps that display point data benefit from this pattern. Cluster marker differentiates overlapping features that are difficult to distinguish and interact with. WHY Data layers can have any number of point features, and it is almost […]

Spatial filter

WHAT The spatial filter pattern reduces available features by selecting a specific geographic region or area of interest. WHY Location, location, location is not only the mantra in real estate but also true for most consumer apps in which location is what people care about the most. This location can be a place or any […]

Attribute filter

WHAT The attribute filter pattern reduces large datasets into more meaningful and manageable selections based on attribute criteria. WHY Filters are omnipresent in modern apps and, like search, are the most important mechanism to find the data that best suits a user’s needs. Search aims at finding a particular place, object, or group of objects […]

Data dimming

WHAT The map contains too many features so that it is difficult to identify them, distinguish them, pick out relationships, see patterns in the distribution. WHY The same location might be occupied by multiple features of different types and therefore visually obscure their existence. Data Dimming helps highlighting related features that are otherwise difficult to […]