Data visualization refers to the presentation of data in a graphical manner. It enables decision-makers grasp complex concepts or identify new data patterns by having a visual view of data analytics. With interactive visualization, you can enhance the idea of data visualization by using technology to convert data into charts and graphs.
Is data visualization a new concept? Why is it important?
Data visualization is not new. Businesses have been generating reports using maps, graphs, and charts as a way to summarize data. Data visualization is important mainly because of the way the human brain is designed to process information. It is always much easier to grasp information by supplementing text-based reports with graphs and charts.
For businesses in particular, data visualization cuts out the cumbersome process of data comprehension and offers users the ability to process and make sense of data using visually-presented and interactive dashboards. Data visualization tools allow users the opportunity to analyze trends interactively, helping businesses to conveniently identify relationships and draw inferences from data.
Despite the significant advantage of data visualization for businesses, it comes with its own set of challenges.
Taking into consideration the importance of data visualization and the challenges that businesses face while attempting to use data visualization, Alibaba Cloud introduced its data visualization tool – DataV.
DataV is an efficient and accessible data visualization tool that uses real-time data-driven dashboards to present and assist in data analysis. It offers several templates allowing users to customize analysis to all types of scenarios, including GIS that makes mapping geographic content convenient. Using simple drag-and-drop functions, users can create professional visualization projects with minimal programming requirement.
While using DataV, you should keep in mind of these four concepts:
Before you start creating a visualization project with DataV, it is imperative that you specify the sources of the raw data. A data source is the location of the raw data. DataV supports the following types of data sources:
Canvas is the primary function area of DataV, also called the interface editor. Canvas offers the users the freedom to adjust the page settings of the project, publish the project, and bind data sources and widgets. This is how Alibaba Cloud DataV canvas looks like:
The toolbar sits at the top of the canvas. It includes functions such as previewing, adding widgets, publishing, and help.
Users can select the widget that they want to include to the canvas from the widget menu on the toolbar. DataV also supports third-party widgets.
Alibaba Singles' Day Global Shopping Festival 2017
In 2017, the Alibaba’s annual shopping extravaganza – Alibaba Singles' Day witnessed more than 1.5 trillion orders. In the DataV visualization dashboard below, the bright lines and dots represent the various transportation routes from suppliers to the customers.
ET City Brain (Hangzhou)
Here, Alibaba utilized DataV to create City Brain, a traffic monitoring system and an interactive analysis interface for Hangzhou City. It collects data across the city and feeds it to a dashboard that analyzes incidents such as public security traffic optimization, accident monitoring and detection, and public transportation schedules.
Smart Parking Management for Parking
DataV displays available parking space on its graphically rich dashboards and ensures real-time parking optimization.
Data visualization is the new trend of representing vast volumes of raw data into meaningful and interactive modes. It is a much-needed evolution of graphical representation of data from simple charts, giving businesses meaningful insight into their products, consumer trends, and market patterns. However, representing data visually and interactively is no easy task.
Alibaba Cloud DataV is a one-stop data visualization tool that provides numerous widgets, visual templates, and a wide range of support for data sources. You too can make use of data visualization to help your business get a competitive edge by visiting www.alibabacloud.com/product/datav.
Alibaba Clouder - July 15, 2020
Joshua Dong - June 27, 2018
Alex - July 9, 2020
Alibaba Clouder - May 21, 2019
GXIC - November 2, 2018
Alibaba Clouder - March 16, 2020
This all-in-one omnichannel data solution helps brand merchants formulate brand strategies, monitor brand operation, and increase customer base.Learn More
A real-time data warehouse for serving and analytics which is compatible with PostgreSQL.Learn More
A premium, serverless, and interactive analytics serviceLearn More
Deploy custom Alibaba Cloud solutions for business-critical scenarios with Quick Start templates.Learn More
More Posts by Alibaba Clouder