YellowFin has a short article on “Best practices” For data analysis and visualization in the Business Intelligence space, and they make a somewhat surprising (and correct) statement that too many people get stuck trying to make flashy and dazzling graphics, forgetting that they’re supposed to be useful before pretty.

Not only can this modern addiction to the sleek and sometimes superficial affect the initial purchase decision, this mindset can place corporate data analysis in a long-term straitjacket. Users of all types will be tempted to dazzle colleagues and clients with impressive looking 3D multi-pie charts and animated graphs to the detriment of the data analysis – The chart, rather than the data, becomes the star of the show. For best practice data analysis, the visualization of that data should only support and facilitate understanding, never distract or detract from it.

This is a trend that’s furthered even more by the constant deluge of infographics that keep popping up around the net.  Rather than condensing mountains of information into a simple understandable image, many of them take one or two sentences and turn it into a 5-screen tall 4Meg image.

via Data analysis & data visualization best practices for Business Intelligence (P1).