I often complain that infoviz for web stats is poor if you’re not an analyst by trade. Now that I’m working for one of the most popular websites in the world, I should at least come up with a device that could be used to answer the fundamental questions we have when looking at real-time analysis of a news article:
- Is this article doing well?
- Is it likely to do better or worse from now on?
- Should we replace this article with another one?
Obviously, there are lots of other questions that need answering, but these are probably the main ones when it comes to news articles – our basic “unit” of content.
My thoughts turned to Stephen Few’s bullet chart (PDF) device for this. However, I made some variations to make what I’m calling a “stake graph” because it can look like a stake you might drive through the heart of a vampire. Or something.