- Actuals: Numerical value of the Lattice Measure for the given Label.
- Analytics: The science of logical analysis.
- Archetype: The purest, first, definitive instance of a product in the culture at large.
- Assimilate: A mode of information acquisition characterized by the unintentional absorption of ambient information through the act of deliberately searching for other more specific content.
- Attributes: Qualitative and Quantitative (Diminsions, Measures) descriptions of an Entity.
- Attribute Title: A labeled category of aggregation in a Row (EMEA, APAC, Etc.).
- Barrel: The thicker gray bar in the bullet graph.
- BCSP: for the Bar Chart Scroll Preview, a design pattern.
- BI: for Business Intelligence, the industry name for business analytics.
- Boards: The screen-sized display unit for LAVA Content.
- Board Sets: Structured, navigable collections of multiple LAVA Boards.
- Bronze Cases: The remainder of a product’s specification after the Golden Path and Silver Scenarios are designed. Often appear only in the form of written use cases.
- BtF: for “Bertin-to-Few”, the visual analytic academic tradition led by the serial publications of Jacques Bertin, Richard Saul Wurman, Edward Tufte, and Stephen Few.
- Bullet: The narrow bar in a bullet graph showing Actual Measure Value.
- Business Intelligence: The methods and technologies that gather, store, report, and analyze business data to help people make business decisions.
- BYOD: for Bring Your Own Device: Employees using their own computing devices for work.
- BYOS: for Bring Your Own Software: Employees using their own software for work.
- Categoric Dimension: A contextual dimension in a Visual Analytic formed by a set of categories identified with Attribute labels. The list of titles in a horizontal bar chart is an example, as is the drill path through a Lattice Stack. It can be ordered alphabetically or by specific or general relevance, as by Measure Value.
- Channels: Horizontally-scrolling containers of multiple Minicharts, charts, or Lattices in a LAVA Board display.
- Chase: The white space above the Lattice Bar Plot, available for display of labels,
flyout text, badges, and comments. - CIO: for Chief Information Officer.
- Closed-Loop: The ability to rewrite master database content through direct manipulation and editing of Visual Analytic Content displays.
- Composites: Preconfigured LAVA Board layout templates.
- Concrete: The property of communication where the form of the Content representation resembles the form and behavior of what it refers to in the real world.
- Consumption: The viewing, manipulation, and analysis of information content.
- Content: Data and its means of presentation.
- CoT: for Cost of Thinking, the effort of users to understand something.
- CoT1: for Cost of Transaction.
- Critical Design: The attitude of always looking for what could break or go wrong with your design, as opposed to fully internalizing the also-important, but dangerous, persuasive attitude that one’s creation is appropriate and good. Validated in Design Stress Tests.
- Cross Dimension: Dimension used to divide plots in the Lattice Rows. Title of the Cross Dimension preceded with “by”.
- CSS3: for Cascading Style Sheets, v.3: A browser standard for handling graphics.
- Data Artisan: A professional at working with and publishing analytic custom content.
- Data Cubes: A data set formatted according to a manipulable matrix of Measures and Dimensions.
- Data Set: A distinct and deliberately prepared quantity of multi-dimensionally formatted data at a scale that enables analysis.
- Dashboards: Screen-based summary reports of an enterprise’s KPIs.
- Design Language: An overarching scheme or style that guides the design of a complement of products or architectural settings.
- Design Stress Tests: Describing how a product design scales to cases of greater volume or complexity.
- Design Triage: Prioritizing the early design of product aspects most likely to have an impact on other product aspects.
- Digest: A collection of Minicharts in a Channel.
- Dimensions: Qualitative attributes of an Entity in a data set.
- DT: For Design Thinking, a distillation of proven problem solving techniques, many coming from the design and “creative” disciplines, into a prescriptive working method for application to problems in business and society in general.
- Dynamic: Of or pertaining to force related to motion.
- E2E: for End to End, referring to the entire data lifecycle, from database to decision transaction.
- Entities: The subjects of a row in the data set: The things in the real world being described and recorded with Measures and Dimensions.
- EPM: for Enterprise Performance Management, the discipline of deciding upon the most important enterprise KPIs, and then reporting these in an easily-consumed, summarized format.
- ERP: for Enterprise Resource Planning, or large scale business software.
- Explore: A mode of information acquisition where workers know they need information but are not sure how to define it.
- Factware: Software products produced with pure Informational Intent, without persuasive bias or entertainment value.
- FMBE: for Formless, Malleable, Boundless, and Evolving, the primary form descriptors of software products.
- Gallery: A collection of charts in a Channel.
- Gamification: The effort to get consumers of productivity software as engaged about using these products as they are when playing digital games.
- Geometric Display: A chart whose quantitative values are plotted on a scale so as to vary in size with higher or lower values. Examples include bar charts, line charts, and pie charts.
- Golden Path: The most important behaviors or paths through a digital product, and the sequence of screens and user actions to depict the path.
- IBCS: for International Business Communications Standards, Rolf Hichert’s finance
reporting visual standards organization. - Infoporn: Visualization used in a trivial or misleading way so as to attract attention.
- Informational intent: To teach or convey facts.
- Information Workers: Enterprise workers using information technology in some way to complete their tasks. Roughly equivalent to the more traditional White Collar workers.
- IoT: for Internet of Things, the network of reporting sensors embedded in products and places.
- KPIs: for Key Performance Indicators, the most important Metrics monitored by a person or organization.
- Header Toolbar: Legend Show/Hide, Sort, Actual/Percentage, and VizType controls atop a Lattice Column.
- Hierarchical Dimensions: Dimensions structured within a fixed hierarchy of other parent and child Dimensions.
- Key: Keyline unit, indicates approx. Measures Value for Cross Dimension.
- Keyline: Heat map display of 1-dimensional time-series data.
- Large-cap Workers: Workers whose decisions have a relatively large impact on their organization.
- Lattice: LAVA’s row-based, multi-dimensional display and analysis Meta Chart.
- Lattice Header: Text header at the top of a Lattice Column.
- Lattice Column: Columns within a Lattice, containing Plot and Number Columns.
- Lattice Measure(s): Measure name selected for the Lattice Column.
- Lattice Title: Title consisting of the Lattice Measure / Cross Dimension.
- LAVA: The Visual Analytic Design Language developed at SAP AG from 2011 to 2014.
- Layer: Vertical division of the Lattice by Dimension.
- Layer Dimension: Chosen Dimension for given Layer, shown in the Layer Title.
- Layer Header: Area at top of a Layer with titling and toolbar.
- Layer Title: Text title for the Layer.
- Layer Toolbar: Rollover fly-out with Layer manipulation controls.
- Lean: A general development efficiency method, in particular the iterative breaking down of long projects into small, well-defined sprints with clear goals, frequent and transparent communication, and the ability to learn and adjust based on completed work and the changing context.
- Legibility: Typically applied to text but also applicable to images and charts, refers to the physical ability of a person to consume the content. Text is illegible if too small, too distant, too distorted, lacking sufficient contrast, or presented in an exotic and undecipherable font or layout.
- Logical Analysis: The separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements.
- Marker: Value indicators for multiple Measures placed along the Track in the Lattice.
- Metric: A relevant variable of any phenomenon whose value can be measured and judged. A combination of an Entity with attached Measure and Dimensional Attribute Values.
- Mental Model: The essence or gestalt of a product from the perspective of an end user – how it is organized and how it works.
- Measures: Quantitative attributes of an Entity in a data set.
- Metacharts: Combinations of multiple charts and behaviors that serve a more specific or powerful purpose than is possible with traditional chart types.
- Minicharts: A special chart format designed for small rectangular display areas and thus having unique, strict systems of rules and constraints for the display of titles, values, and visuals.
- Monitor: A mode of information acquisition characterized by repeated, short-term checking of the specific status of key metrics.
- Normalized Measures: The converting or mapping of Measure Values into a base-ten scale, of 1-10, 1-100, 1-1000, to create a standard context and a commonly understood framework for comparison.
- Numeric Display: Quantitative data depicted with words and numbers organized into rows and columns as with spreadsheets.
- Occlusion: The hiding of relevant content through being overlapped by other
display elements. - Percentages: % contribution of the Entity’s Attribute Actual Value as part of the parent Value.
- Persuasive Intent: To change opinion with bias.
- Platinum Views: Digital product screen shots that best represent what the product is and does.
- PNI: for Personal Numerical Inclination, an individual’s inclination to attempt numerical calculations.
- Poetic intent: To entertain or inspire.
- Points: LAVA’s Minichart format.
- Precognitive: The immediate, unconscious, involuntary emotional and attention- directing reaction to visual stimuli.
- Predictive: Software product features that use statistical algorithms to predict future events or likely behaviors.
- Prepared Analytics: Highly preconfigured analytic consumption artifacts, for low-cost,
automated creation and consumption on a mass scale. - Prototype: The first instance of a product, within a project or in the culture at large.
- Provisioning: The work and processes of preparing analytic content for consumption by others.
- Quantitative Analysis: The highly interactive process of studying and manipulating a data set to discover its structure, trends, outliers, and any other clues as to how the data can describe the corresponding real-world phenomena.
- Readability: Goes beyond legibility to include a viewer’s motivation and inclination to commit to reading something, and is where the artistic and persuasive aspects of graphic design come into play.
- Reporting: The systematic creation of quantitative reports on topics of enterprise activity.
- RISD: for Rhode Island School of Design.
- Row: Horizontal division within a Layer, displays Content for an Entity.
- Robust Design: The discipline of designing systems that are simple, clear, reliable, viable, and scalable.
- Row Dividers: Horizontal hairlines dividing Rows.
- Row Plot: 1-dimensional spatial representation of Entity’s Measure Value.
- SaaS: for Software as a Service, the mode of renting software delivered over the Internet.
- Scale: Horizontal geometric division of Lattice Column, with Layer-specific values.
- Scale Dividers: Vertical hairlines to indicate Scale divisions across Rows.
- Search: A mode of information acquisition characterized by deliberate and focused effort to answer a well-known and specific question.
- Silver Scenarios: Secondary scenarios from the Golden Path, depicted in a separate mockup.
- Skeuo: for skeuomorphism, the use of physical design metaphors in software user interfaces.
- SLA: for Service Level Agreement.
- Slice: Subdivision of a Strip.
- Small-cap Workers: Workers whose decisions have relatively small impact on their organization.
- Stack: The vertical sequence of Layers in a Lattice Column.
- Statpop: Mass-market publication of visual analytics for journalistic purpose.
- Stereotype: The commodified instance of a product in the culture at large.
- Storytelling: The explaining or proposing of content as an exposition or argument.
- Strip: Bar visualization, possibly divided into Slices.
- TCO: for Total Cost of Ownership, of software or another complex product.
- Thresholding: A conscious limiting of focus, scope, and commitment so as to provide only the most useful product features and content.
- Track: Modified bullet graph for plotting 1-dimensional Values.
- Tripodal Design: The concurrent consideration in the design process of the DT goals to be Feasible, Viable, and Desirable, through the involvement of Technology, Business, and People.
- T-Shaped Prototyping: Concurrently designing a product’s broader aspects with less detail while designing a specific product aspect or section in greater detail.
- Values: Quantitative or Qualitative Attribute values, such as Male/Female or numerical amount.
- Variety: From Ross Ashby’s principle of Requisite Variety that states that the more variety in the form and ability of a system, the more it can do to react to its circumstances and survive, but the more complex and prone to error and breakdown.
- Visual: The geometric display plot or symbolic image within a chart.
- Visual Analytics: Logical analysis conducted primarily through viewing and interacting, or Consumption of, geometric, graphic, or pictographic depictions of quantitative data, as with charts.
- Visual Types: Different visualization types, like amount comparison, time series,
tables, etc. - Visualization: Presenting data or ideas with literal or metaphorical visual imagery versus strictly with text and numbers.
- Well: A collection of Lattices in a Channel.
- Windowshade Handle: Down-arrows below Layers for manual Layer resizing in a Lattice.
- Wire: Hairline to right of Track for aligning Markers.
- XP: for Extreme Programming.
26. Glossary
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