1. Designing Effective Output
CSCI 252 Ch 11
Designing Effective Output

2. Information Be able to define . . .
Subset of data / query that answers the right question at the right time
Subjective
Short shelf life
Understandable / comprehendible

3. Objectives:
Serves a purpose (Output driven by user / organizational spec)
Meaningful (if not understood . . .not info!)
Quantity (see meaningful . . )
Distribution (see meaningful)
Timeliness (see meaningful)
Method (Printsee meaningful)

4. Relating Content to Method
Print?
Video? ?
Screen?
How will data be used? Who’s looking at the data? What is the purpose?

5. Turnaround Document

6. Output Methods

7. Video, Audio, Animation Supplement static output
Distance collaboration
Show and tell
SOP
Archiving (posterity, accessibility)

8. Electronic Output
RSS Feeds
Push technology
Pull technology

9. Consider: Audience (specific / general? Quantity?
Timeliness? Frequency?
Reliability?
Compatibility?
Security?
Support (manufacture)

10. Costs Initial costs (hardware / software) Training? Learning curve
Human environmental requirements
Accessibility / security
Noise /interference
Temperature / environment
Access points

11. Bias
Sorting
Limits
Graphs
Impact on end users

12. Printed Report Design Costs Standardization
Functional attributes (heading / page numbers, grouping / sorting)

13. Printed Reports

14. Display
Simplicity
Consistency
Facilitate movement among output
Humane

15. Display

16. Display (drill down)

17. Graphical Output
Consider
Purpose
Data type
Audience
Desired result

18. What’s being expressed?

19. Dashboards

20. Web Widgets and gadgets Study other websites
Use professional tools (speed)

21. Blogs
Audience?
Purpose?
Expectations?

22. Output Production and XML
XML Data: Defined once, used in many places . . .
XSLT (extensible style language transformations)
CSS (cascading style sheets)
AJAX (JavaScript and XML)