Infogr.am, a free online data visualization tool still in its beta, shows great potential to become a reporting tool for online presentation of raw data.
Data visualization is becoming an important part of multimedia or digital reporting – a table of raw data is something for the print media; nowadays, people expect to see the data being visualized in the form of a good-looking (interactive) graph.
New tools are being developed and promoted for online data visualization. Here I’m offering a review of infogr.am, a free, drag-n-drop online tool.
For a test review of infogr.am, I compiled a simple table of raw data, a four-year budget report for three divisions in a corporation.
I created an account with infogr.am, chose two templates, uploaded the data to each template, and tweaked the styles and looks of each template. After I hit “publish,” the program generates embed codes for each visualization. Here’s what I got:
I used to use Google Fusion Tables to visualize data for online presentation. In comparison, infogr.am has several advantages over Google Fusion Tables: (a) infogr.am provides users with an each-to-use working interface, whereas Google Fusion Tables demands some time and patience to go through some tutorials; (b) infogr.am provides better customization and tweaking options; and (c) infogr.am can present multiple items at a time, whereas Google Fusion (at least the classic version) can only show one variable at a time.
Below are the same data being visualized with Google Fusion Tables – notice that what you see is what I got – the only thing I could change is the size of the graph; besides, it can only show one year in one graph – the one being show is for 2008, if I need to show 2009 and other years, I need to produce multiple graphs.
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