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As I have stated is previous posts, I am not a big fan of pie charts. This is one use of a derivative of pies that I do consider effective in some cases. Most folks know the pictogram below as Harvey Balls, which can be used to indicate the degree (5 step scale) an item meets some standard or criteria. Even Edward Tufte stated in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, “This is a particular ingenious mix of table and graphic, portraying a complex set of comparison…” A great use of Harvey Balls is to compare products, cars, software, etc where concrete numbers do not exist.

Consumer Reports created a variation, shown below, of Harvey Balls and popularized them in their magazine. Their version uses a small dot for the excellent rating to further differentiate it from poor if printed in black and white. Also, if done in color, you can quickly pick out those rated in black (fair or poor) from those in red (excellent or very good).

Additionally, Consumer Reports includes a horizontal bar chart, sorted in descending order, to show the overall score each item received. This puts those items with the best score on top and lowest on the bottom. Another great element they have is listing the critical features with a check mark if that one is present in the item. Anyone using Consumer Reports would probably agree that this rating system is very effective and comprehensive. Now, whether the ratings are fair or accurate is a different topic.

Finally, the last figure below shows one item’s (vehicle) rating in each category over time. This gives the reader a view into what were problem areas in the past versus now. Whenever I have researched a new vehicle or significant item purchase, I have utilized Consumer Reports.

A great application of Harvey Balls could be to compare your company against its competitors in different strategic areas such as: procurement, services, products, technology, customer service, billing, financials, etc.

If you are interested in adding Harvey Balls to your “tool kit”, the font can be downloaded here (provided by Sonia Coleman). Just download the font and add it to the font folder. While using PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc, when you click Insert -> Symbol there should be an option for a font called Pie Charts for Maps, which gives you every option needed to create Harvey Balls on your own. Also, you can modify the color or size just like any other font. I found this method the fastest after downloading the font.

To learn more about adding fonts to a MAC Operating System click here .

To learn more about adding fonts to a Windows Operating System click here .

If you have a more efficient way to create Harvey Balls or additional application, please share it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 2:07 am and is filed under Analytics, Presentation, Reporting, Tony, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.