Excel, as in my company, is ubiqitous throughout most businesses so by default it will reach the most users as a delivery platform. So, when I start to get specific about report design strategies and tactics, I will be talking about them in the context of Excel - unless otherwise noted.

There are some great tools out there for visual presentation of quantitative data, SigmaPlot and Illustrator being two of my favorites but they have a relatively low adoption rate amongst my users so I only use them in special-needs cases.

Instant:
an infinitesimal space of time; especially: a point in time seperating two states

Cognition:
The term cognition (Latin: cogito, “to think”) is used in several loosely-related ways to refer to a facility for the intelligent processing of information. In psychology, it is used to refer to the mental processes of an individual, with a particular focus toward the study and understanding of mental states (ie. beliefs, desires and intentions) in terms of information processing especially in the area of context awareness (ie. abstraction or concretization), or where processes involving knowledge, expertise, or learning are at work.

Intuition:
Apprehension or cognition, that is, knowledge or conviction without consideration, thought, or inference.

Source: Wikipedia

Instant Cognition is, simply, Intuition. I’ve provided some definitions below but in the context of Report Design, what we really want to do is create reports that are intuitive - that is, they are immediately understood. Users do not have to puzzle over what we mean or why we did something. Instead they grasp the information immediately and can start working on the important stuff - what action can they take to replicate the successes shown in the report, to recover from the weaknesses exposed by the report, etc.

If you are the web analytics gal or guy at your business, chances are that the reports you publish are more visible than you are (except for in relatively small organizations where everyone knows everyone). Therefore your reports are both your business card and your proxy.

With that in mind, you should strive to make your reports represent all that you are professionally and to communicate, as much as possible, the same depth of analysis that you would be able to present to the team (or individual) in a face-to-face situation.

This blog strives to detail the pertinent trials and tribulations of one guy’s journey to develop effective reports for the decision-makers within his organization. Hopefully, it will provide some insight into what makes a report good, bad or ugly.