Interactive Data Visualization

by Ryan Goodman

06/26/08 17:07 , Categories: Dashboards, Crystal Xcelsius, Xcelsius 2008 , Tags: dashboards, gas price dashboard, xcelsius 2008

As the gas prices at the pump increase, I wanted to see just how much we are paying for gas here in California compared to the rest of the country. To do this, I utilized Xcelsius 2008 to build a dashboard not only to help make information easier to consume, but also to showcase a sample/viral dashboard for my blog.

The resulting dishoard exemplifies the benefits of using interactive data visualization compared to static HTML tables/reports. At a glance, I can quickly asses what I am paying at the pump in relation to the national average and state averages.

Just showing the data wasn't good enough...I wanted to provide additional analysis to transform the $/gallon data into something meaningful. A simple calculator was added to illustrate what we will pay per month and year, given the current price.

Gas Prices Dashboard View full size example

All data for this dashboard originates from AAA.com. I am not providing source files for this dashboard at this time, but if you have any questions about what I have done, please add them to the comments in this post. If you are interested in using this dashboard in your web site for non-profit, please contact me.

I have several people point out that the gauges are distracting, which is absolutely correct. I have reverted back to the original graph version that can be viewed here:
View Gas Price Dashboard v0.9

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13 comments

Comment from: RTY [Visitor]

Ryan,

This I had to bookmark. This is nice!

Great work!

06/26/08 @ 19:21

Comment from: bfine [Visitor] · http://www.allthingsnewthought.com

Where are you getting the feed for the
news headline/stories?

06/27/08 @ 06:54

Comment from: Ryan Goodman [Member]

· http://ryangoodman.net/blog

The news feeds are coming from Google. I created a custom RSS feed using Google news, then used the XML maps feature to consume this data and display it in Xcelsius.

06/27/08 @ 07:36

Comment from: Leonid Koyfman [Visitor]

Ryan,

it would be great to learn step by step what you did to handle that RSS feed. Could you teach us this technique in one of your postings?

Thank you,
Leonid

06/27/08 @ 09:20

Comment from: Katie [Visitor]

Hello Ryan,

i was looking through your website and i think i found a glith, it is on the chart for gas prices in the USA.
Wyoming had a bit of trouble wroking.

Thank you,
Yours Truly,

Katie

06/27/08 @ 09:37

Comment from: Aron Wilson [Visitor]

x x
x x x
x x x
x x x x
x x x x
Last Year Last Month Yesterday Today

I really like this dashboard, it very easy to understand and use; and it's great timing. I did have one idea regarding the dial gauges, I think it would be a lot easier to see and compare if the information was in a bar graph like above (or a horizontal one). That way, the price progression and comparison would stand out.
Just a thought because I'll be showing this to everyone I know.
Thanks,
Aron

07/01/08 @ 18:33

Comment from: Matt [Visitor]

Ryan,
This is great and very timely! Thanks for sharing.

Couple of thoughts:
IMO The dial should read "Future Price Change" and be centered at 0 - "Future Price Increase" shows a bias (although probably accurate).
Adding a variance to the impact analysis would be cool.
Does AAA.com expose a web services for the data or are you scraping it of the site and preprocessing it?

Thanks again,
Matt

07/03/08 @ 08:23

Comment from: Claire James [Visitor]

Very nice. Can you make Wyoming work? I'm moving there next week. Thanks!

07/03/08 @ 08:31

Comment from: Diesel Boy [Visitor]

Great dashboard, but I'd recommend you increase the allowed gas tank size. I drive a standard diesel pickup trunk with a fuel capacity of 35 gallons, and some pickup trunks are even larger. A good maximum might be 100 gallons, for those driving a dually with two fuel tanks.

07/09/08 @ 11:16

Comment from: MyXcelsius [Visitor] · http://myxcelsius.com

This is nice. I think i need to plan my next gig based on this. Thanks Ryan

07/18/08 @ 10:05

Comment from: vel [Visitor]

it is very nice

07/20/08 @ 06:46

Comment from: Kalyan Verma [Visitor]

· http://myxcelsius.com

Is the data realtime? I was comparing the dashboard data with the AAA data (http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/CAavg.asp). They dont match. The "Gasoline" google news feed is working live.

07/29/08 @ 14:48

Comment from: Kalyan Verma [Visitor]

· http://myxcelsius.com

I was wondering, where did you find the XML live feed for the Gas Prices on AAA. I searched a lot, but couldn't find one. Anyways, can we use Excel Web Queries in Xcelsius. I used to create Live Dashboards in Excel using Web Queries before Xcelsius was launched, i was wondering if we can use the same in Xcelsius?

07/29/08 @ 22:30

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This blog is my personal space for technologies and techniques for presenting information in the form of visual analytics and interactive dashboard applications. I consider myself an Xcelsius evangelist, but most importantly an advocate of enabling technologies that make data visualization applications easy to produce. Much of the information posted on this blog will feature Xcelsius tricks and best practices based on my technical expertise, but I do have other interests in design, Rich Internet Applications, user experience design, human-computer interface (HCI), and voice recognition technology.