Telling the Story

Tips when Upgrading or Downgrading your MS Office Version

Planning to upgrade or change your version Microsoft Office?  Since upgrading or downgrading your Office version can lead to changes that prevent Mekko from running properly, our recommendation is that you uninstall Mekko Graphics from your computer prior to your Office upgrade, and then reinstall Mekko Graphics after you have installed the new Office version.

To uninstall Mekko Graphics on a Windows XP machine:

· Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel. Select Add/Remove Programs.

· Scroll down and highlight the Mekko Graphics program.

· Select ‘Uninstall’. A confirmation box will display. Click on Yes to uninstall.

To uninstall Mekko Graphics on a Windows Vista machine:

· Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel.  Select Programs and Features.

· Scroll down and highlight the Mekko Graphics program.

· Select ‘Uninstall’. A confirmation box will display. Click on Yes to uninstall.

As part of the uninstall process, you will see a Product Deactivation Screen with your serial number in the gray box. You have the option to print this out to have a record of your serial number.

 

Once you’ve successfully upgraded or downgraded your version of MS Office, reinstall Mekko Graphics and reactivate using your serial number.

To Reinstall and Reactivate Mekko Graphics

1. If you don’t already have it, go to our website (www.mekkographics.com) and download the installation file MekkoSetup4.exe to your computer.
2. Double click MekkoSetup4.exe to begin installation. 
3. Follow installation instructions
4. Once installed, launch PowerPoint and insert a Mekko Graphics chart.
5. You will be prompted to activate your software. Enter your serial number.

 

License Error: Alert Information

Recently our Mekko Graphics Support team has been noticing that there’s been an increase in the incidence of an error message experienced by our users.  That’s the bad news. The good news is that there’s an easy solution and I’d like to provide that here, as well as some background on the error itself.

Here’s the symptom:  For users of Mekko Graphics 4 and higher, they launch PowerPoint and the following error displays: 

 
The problem is actually that our Mekko Graphics PowerPoint add-in references a standard Microsoft Windows file called comdlg32.ocx.  Microsoft recently did an update that replaced this .ocx file with a version that does not work well with Mekko Graphics. For users who have installed this Microsoft update, our add-in generates an error when PowerPoint starts. As a result, the Mekko menu is unavailable.

To remedy this problem, we have created a patch. All you need to do is go to our home page at www.mekkographics.com, look at the bottom of the page for our   symbol, and click on the link to download the patch file.

Once you have downloaded the file, exit PowerPoint if it is running, copy the downloaded file to C:\Program Files\Knowledge Management\Mekko Graphics 4 and overwrite the existing file.

Colorful Expressions

Colorful Expressions.

The use of color can be a powerful tool when creating charts to both enhance the meaning and clarity of our data, but we don’t always use it well.  And although I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert in color theory, what I hope is that I can go over some basic rules of thumb to help you make good choices when creating your Mekko Graphics color palette and draw order selections.

Mekko Graphics give you full control over your color palette and draw order through the Preference Manager. But tempting as it may be to get on the Crayola website and create periwinkle, goldenrod and carnation pink, try to remember not use color arbitrarily.

Use color only to accentuate the message of your chart.
Adorning your chart with lots of fun colors for the sake of decorating can distract users from the message. Consider this chart.

Multicolor

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In this example, the colors serve no real purpose. You want the user to be comparing bar heights, not colors, so why add them? Now let’s see the same chart stripped of multiple colors.

One Color

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Better right? Now you more intuitively compare bar heights and the message is clear. Whenever you’re tempted to add color, ask yourself if adding color serves a purpose. If not, avoid using it.

Stay tuned for part two of my examination of color, where I’ll give examples of how to best use color to highlight, group, and convey your intended message.

 

Click here for part two of Colorful Expressions!

10 Tips of the Trade: Some pointers for creating bar charts in Mekko Graphics

Mekko Graphics doesn’t have a little animated paper clip to give you your daily tips, so I decided to share 10 basic tips to think about when creating your bar charts. Hopefully, this method will prove to be less intrusive.

1.   Decide whether you want a chart or a table. Do you want to communicate a message, display a trend or show a relationship or comparison? Or do you just want to show data?  If you just want to show data, sometimes a table is a better bet. If you want to drive home a message, a chart is generally better. If there is no benefit to seeing your data as a chart, then it’s better to present it in a table.

2. Choose the right chart for the job. Many experts prefer a bar chart instead of a pie chart because it is sometimes easier to compare bar heights to pie slices, but a pie chart gives you the perception of a whole that is absent in a bar chart. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different charts. Mekko Graphics gives a good overview of each type of chart in Chart Properties. Make sure you are creating the best chart for the message you really want to communicate.
3. KISS – Keep it Simple and Stupid. There should be 1-2  primary messages in each chart. The message(s) of your chart should be apparent. If people have to hunt for the message, they’re going to miss it, or lose interest. If you have more things to say, maybe more charts are the way to go.
4. Don’t Overcrowd Your Chart.  Even if there are only one to two messages, an overcrowded chart can still cause your message to get lost. One way to avoid overcrowding is to use an Other Series to combine your less relevant or insignificant data into one series. Another way is to use Data Rows. The use of data rows can allow the user to see the detailed information in your charts without overcrowding the chart itself.
5. Think about Color. Mekko Graphics give you full control over your color palette and draw order. Take advantage and use colors in a way that makes sense. Sometimes that means tailoring your chart colors to a company’s corporate scheme. Other times it means using color to communicate a message or to make your important information get noticed. You should be aware of how your audience views your colors. This is especially important if you are targeting an audience of a different culture than your own (or a global audience). The cultural basis for color symbolism can be very powerful, and if you don't understand what you're saying with your colors, you can make big mistakes.
6. Think about Labels. Color can tell a story but labels are important too. And there are still many black and white printers in the world, so be sure your message does not disappear when printed in black and white. You not only need to have the labels, they need to be readable. $2,123,234 might be accurate, but $2M might be a better label. The accuracy doesn’t help if the audience can’t read it.
7. Sorting. Generally, it’s good practice to sort your data in Ascending or Descending order. The exception is if there’s an obvious natural order, like chronological order. Sort your data in a way that reinforces your message.  You may want to change your sort to better communicate your message, and feel free to play with the different sort options before deciding on a final sort. 
8. Use horizontal bar charts when x labels are too large to be correctly displayed.
9. The y axis scale generally starts at zero.This is particularly important if you are using bar charts; make sure you have a (very) good reason to break this rule.  For some examples where a non-zero value does help, see my previous blog entry “It’s OK to Look at the Scale.”
10. Use a Legend only when needed. Let’s face it. To read a legend, you have look away from the rest of the chart. This may be necessary to keep the chart from being overcrowded or to get necessary information, but if you can put the information in the chart effectively, then it’s much more intuitive to the reader. I’ve seen many charts (particularly cluster bar charts), where the series labels display on the chart, but the chart includes a legend with the same information.

In subsequent blog entries, I plan to elaborate more on some of these points, and I’d love to hear if you have ideas as well. What are your tips of the trade?

A Case for Marimekko

Call me a control freak, call it  a character flaw, or perhaps it’s just a natural side effect of 8 years of working with Mekko Graphics software , but when I see a chart, be it in an advertisement, a news article, or a blog, I have to “fix” it.  It’s a compulsion.  (I have the same issue with fonts; I can’t help it, I like fonts - and there so gloriously many of them!). 

So when I came across this article about understanding health care risk, and examined the table, I felt an uncontrollable urge to find a way to better visualize the information.  I should say that the information in the table is useful, but I think it would be enhanced by a more visual format, and it’s the perfect opportunity to illustrate the value of the Marimekko chart.

The Marimekko is my favorite Mekko Graphics chart. Not natively supported by Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint, the Marimekko is particularly elegant because of how much it can communicate and how intuitive it is to read.  Sometimes referred to as a variable-width chart, the Marimekko communicates three levels of data in a single two-dimensional graph.

Consider the original table.

When I look at the table, I can see that most of the costs are considered to be high consumer discretion (i.e. I choose whether to live with the problem or go to the doctor).  Treatment for unpredictable and catastrophic events only comprises 31% of the cost US health care spending.

However, there’s a lot more information in that table and perhaps we can learn even more if we display the information more graphically.

Let’s look at this chart redone as a Marimekko.

Marimekko Harvard Business Publishing

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This shows a lot of the same information. The same high, medium, low categories of consumer discretion are displayed on the X axis, while the vertical axis shows the breakdown of those  levels into the types of care that contribute to them.  However, displaying it as a Marimekko gives the viewer a stronger visual sense of the relative contributions of each risk type.  Had there been more risk types to the medium and low categories, this type of representation would have been even more helpful.

But there’s more information in that original table, and the Marimekko gives us a handy way of displaying it. In the table, each category of risk also includes the consumer’s ability to absorb expenses related to that risk. This information is lost in the table and hard to see. However, what if we added that information to the Marimekko as color, so we are still looking at all the original data, plus this new piece of information. Here is that same Marimekko chart with the risk categories color-coded, according to the consumer’s ability to absorb the expense.

 

Nature of Health Risk- Marimekko Chart

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When I saw this, I suddenly noticed that there is a lot of expense that the consumer cannot absorb. Furthermore, the consumer has very little discretion whether to incur those costs. What was lost in the original chart is how much cost the consumer could neither afford nor control.   Displaying it as a Marimekko really showed me an aspect of the health care risk I had not considered before.

My control freak is satisfied. By displaying the information more graphically, I was able to see something I had missed before.  Now...should we address the fonts?