New information visualizations for new ways of managing services

In this presentation I will describe a variety of visu­a­li­za­tion types that could be very useful for managing services but are rarely seen. I will build upon my distinction between “data visualization” and “information visualization”. There are many reasons for this rarity:

• visualization creators are not aware of the chart types and their usefulness
• the tool developers reuse chart­ing libraries that do not include those types
• the recipients of those chart types might not understand them at first sight
• organizational inertia drags down the desire to improve or innovate
• the tool developers do not perceive there to be a demand for chart types other than the ones they offer.

I do not include in this article the types of charts that are commonly available in the tools service ma­na­gers tend to use: integrated ticketing tools and spreadsheet tools. These charts—bar charts, dot plots, area charts, radar charts, pie charts, bubble charts, diverse gauges, combinations of these types and yet several other types—tend to be designed for data visu­a­li­za­tions rather than in­for­ma­tion visualizations. They are a form of baby talk in the realm of visu­a­li­za­tion. Let’s try to use a more mature language to communicate our messages.