DM Review Contest Guidlines

copy-n-pasted below is the text of the contest guidlines...


DM Review 2005 Data Visualization Competition:

Data warehouses have been around for a decade and business intelligence 
is an accepted business practice. Now it is time to focus on the only 
part of business intelligence that most people see: the presentation of 
information to those responsible for doing something about it. 

DM Review is sponsoring this competition to discover and recognize best 
practices for data visualization. We are looking for the graphical 
presentation of data for four separate real-world scenarios. Each involves 
the display of quantitative business data ? three scenarios are prescribed, 
and one allows you to solve a data visualization problem of your own choosing. 
This is your chance to demonstrate your talent and to contribute to our effort 
to promote data visualization excellence.


Judging criteria:

Winning entries will be selected on the basis of their ability to present 
graphical solutions that effectively communicate the data and the intended 
messages provided in the scenarios. For our purposes, effective communication 
is defined as a solution that achieves the following:

   Clarity: The data and message can be understood easily, 
            fully and accurately.
   Efficiency: The data and message can be understood quickly. 



Scenario 1
This scenario involves the display of departmental salary expenses. 
It is used by the VP of Human Resources to compare the salary expense 
of the company's eight departments as they fluctuate through time, in 
total and subdivided between the exempt and non-exempt employees.


Scenario 2
This scenario involves the display of employee salaries per salary grade, 
with a comparison of male vs. female salaries and a comparison of actual 
salaries to the prescribed salary ranges per salary grade. The purpose is 
to detect possible inequities between males and females and to determine how 
closely the prescribed salary ranges are being observed.



Scenario 3
What appears in the following spreadsheet is the raw data from which the 
contents of a sales dashboard should be derived. The level of detail 
reflected in the data need not appear on the dashboard but ought to be 
presented at a level that sales executives can use to monitor sales 
performance on a daily basis. As a dashboard, all of the information 
should fit on a single screen. Prominence should be given to the major 
metrics and attention should be drawn to any measures that indicate poor 
performance in relation to the targets. The dashboard should be designed 
in a way that allows sales executives to know at a glance any areas of sales ? 
both problems and opportunities ? that might require their attention.


Scenario 4
There are no specific guidelines for this scenario. You may present any 
real-world data and message that can be addressed through a data visualization. 
It may be a graph, a dashboard or any other visual presentation of quantitative 
data. This is your opportunity to showcase a data visualization of which you 
are particularly proud.

Back to Samples Index