Well, neither have I … but other people are. Here are some links for those of you interested in creating bullet charts.
But first, an example of a bullet chart
- Bullet Graphs for Not-to-Exceed Targets
- Business Objects’ Bullet Graphs: A Good Idea, Implemented Poorly
- Holiday Goodies – Google Chart API Challenge Charts Explained Part 1
- Creating Bullet Charts in Excel
- How to Create Bullet Graphs To Replace Gauges in Excel
- Build Excel Bullet Graphs for your Dashboard
- IBM: Using Bullet Graph as a design-pattern builder
As always, thanks for listening.
~alex
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I had to view several examples and explanations before I understood what the bullet chart was intended for. And, then I saw charts that broke traditional conventions (lighter shades for worse performance, zero value at the right side of the chart, etc.), and I realized, this type of chart is simply too confusing, requires too much interpretation.
Perhaps once a viewer is used to the format, it is an excellent display of this kind of information, but I believe the amount of time required to understand exactly what is being portrayed is unwarranted. For example, putting a thick black bar inside the other bars indicates this bar is a subset of the other bars, a percentage of their area, if you will, and not a performance indicator. Also, having three legend items that are not like kind is very confusing; in the example above, the black box is not parallel to the pink or green boxes, so it should not be treated the same.
Perhaps with some simple information design enhancements the bullet chart could be as quick a read as a pie or bar chart, but for now, it’s simply too complex.