From 2x2s to 4x4s - heat map to visualize trade-offs

Not a grand presentation design insight today, but a quick sketch.

Matrices such as 2x2s are often over-used. When you combine them with a heatmap, some colors and some gradients, you get a nice visualization of a trade-off:

Update: to show that the big lines are not grid lines, here are the 3x3, 2x2 and 1x1 versions of the same chart:

Financial crisis - at least there are opportunities for data visualization...

The current financial crisis is a "gold mine" for data visualization. Below is a heatmap taken from a recent IMF report on the world's financial (in)stability. The chart shows how the troubles have spread from subprime mortgages to other asset classes over the course of 2007 and 2008. Many more data visualization examples related to the financial crisis can be found on Paul Kedrosky's "Infectious Greed" blog. I discussed a financial crisis primer in PowerPoint earlier here. More on heatmaps here and here.

Heatmap - visualizing complex trade-offs

Often the key page in a presentation is the one that makes the trade-off between a number of alternatives. Examples are selecting a new strategic direction for a company, or explaining why your product is better than all alternatives in the market. It is "easy" to write down this information in document: a big table with all the pros and cons explained. However this approach is too dense for a presentation slide. I often use a "heat map" in these situations. Options on one axis, criteria on the other, and use shades and tints of the same color to show relevance ("dark = good"). 

• Select criteria in a smart way: group similar items that give similar scores (volume, revenue, profit) across criteria into one
• Use minimal text to describe options, criteria. 
• Group rows, columns in such a way that you create big "fields" of similar color

When presenting the slide, the point is not to discuss all the cells (that should be done in subsequent slides, 1 topic per slide), but rather to highlight the point that "option 4 is the best".