For folks in the BI space, iRise has just announced a new version of their tool called iRise 8.5. If offers the usually improvements across the board, but of particular interest is a feature called ‘iBlocs’. Now, you can create your own macros and visualizations and save them as ‘iBlocs’ to share with coworkers and friends, and they even have a complete starter library on their website.
A set of custom UI components and behaviors packaged as iBlocs are now freely available from the iRise Website, enabling customers of iRise 8.5 to quickly import them into their projects and accelerate the simulation of complex behaviors. This initial delivery of iBlocs is the precursor to a commercial iRise marketplace where partners, customers and developers will build, share and sell iBlocs. iBlocs enable visualization authors to intuitively assemble in seconds visualizations that contain complex behaviors. For the novice user, they offer a path to rapid learning and the capability to build visualizations quickly and simply. For the more seasoned user, the reusable components help enforce best practices in design and usability
While this seems trivial, it’s an important feature that’s cropping up all around us. As data analysis and visualization grows and moves into new arenas, the first question is always about training: How do we get new users up to speed as fast as possible? A lot goes into training and simplifying the user interface, but the easiest and best solution is usually to provide good starting points so the users can start over halfway to their goal, and then just tweak a few final parameters. Tools like VisTrails are a good example of an entire company built around just providing those starting points and libraries to integrate it into tools. Folks like Tableau do the same with Tableau Public, making it faster to get started so novices and get up and running very quickly, while more advanced users can spend their time refining the details.
via iRise Visualizations Now Ten Times Faster and Easier to Assemble – KansasCity.com.
