One of the perks of writing this blog is that friends and colleagues send me all sorts of examples of data visualization that they come across in their daily lives. This is helping me to amass quite the collection of good and not-so-good infographics.

A recent forwarded email from a friend had examples that fall into both of these categories. The email highlighted 10 recent infographics on the topic of how people use the mobile web. I've included my favorite and least favorite (aka favorite example of what not to do) below.

Thanks, Danny, for sharing!

Favorite

Why I like it: it's clean and easy to read. I think the use of pics vs. words to label the chart axes is clever (and manages to be straightforward without being obnoxious). It allows for some interesting info discovery, for example, high tablet use while watching television.

I would like a little more information on exactly what data is being depicted, though. Is it the percent who say they ever access the web on the given device in the given location/occasion, or do so with some specific level of frequency?

Least favorite

Why I think it's bad in a nutshell:

It's glitzy and includes a lot of noise that distracts and doesn't add informative value: background figures, shadowing, bizarre shapes and fonts. The Christmas color scheme, in addition to being obnoxious, is not color-blind-friendly.
The data visuals are hard to read (visual comparisons between the number of little phones or - even better - little phones with little bows on them - are not straightforward for our eyes, which have a hard time attributing quantitative value to 2D space).