How to make graphs more interactive and fun

Jun 11, 2015

Good morning everyone!

My content is very dry. It's mostly graphs ;(

I try to forgo the less important ones, but it's hard to come up with an interactive course.

Have any suggestions on what I could do with those graphs (course on ruminant nutrition) more exciting?

 

Thanks!

Claudiane

6 Replies
Tristan Hunt

Recently I built one where there was a lot of information so I started with the very basics and layered all the additional information so they could click buttons to add on to the graph and see the different effects.

Also I animated a pie graph when a section is removed and then dissected into another pie graph.

While not exactly exciting it does make it more interesting for the learner and allows them to interact with the content. 

 

 

 

David Tait

Hi Claudiane,

I'd consider looking at infographic books, particularly ones that concentrate on graphics created for newspapers. The designers of these haven't had the luxury of unlimited screen space and interactive reveals and will have had to work with very limited space. This will result in very well designed infographics/graphs/charts etc that will hopefully inspire you. There are some nice looking infographics online but I really would look at some books as the designs are so much better.

Once you have some ideas for the design hopefully the interactive ideas will follow. 

I'd also suggest creating a style guide for your graphs/tables/charts and I'd stick quite rigidly to it to ensure that everything remains consistent, for me there are few things nicer to look at than well presented data (geek alert). If they look great and the data is easy to read (which is the most important point) you might get away without having to crowbar in a whole load of interactivity for the sake of it.

If all you want are ideas for interactivity the most basic one would be to show the graph axis and have a click to reveal the data. Really simple, not particularly innovative but certainly not one to ignore. 

Another idea might be to have a tabbed interaction to allow you to toggle between multiple charts on a single slide.

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