A new data portal www.data.gov.sg

The Singapore government has launched a new portal last month: www.data.gov.sg. This data treasure trove stores more than 5000 sets of data from 50 ministries and public agencies.

Totally free for everyone, you can see data sets from Finance, Health, Education,Manpower ministries, Monetary Authority of Singapore among many others. This is excellent news for app developers looking for reliable public data to use!

Beautiful Forms in Microsoft Excel. More examples.

Here are more examples for form designs in Microsoft Excel.
See pic below. The use of bold fonts in appropriate columns make this form easy to read at a glance. The simple yellow bar on the left highlights the important figures.

See pic below. With careful layout of columns and rows, this form can be replicated in Excel.

See pic below. A simple design that can be created with cell coloring in Excel.

Beautiful forms in Microsoft Excel Example

Entering data on thoughtfully and beautifully designed forms can be a pleasure! Look at these examples.

I loved this form because:

Bold and clear layout that is easy on the eye.

The form explained the underlying work process clearly at the beginning.

Straightforward and clearly marked sections that is easy to understand.

Instructions on how to submit the form was provided right at the end. The user wont have scan and search for it.

It makes me wonder why HR forms always seems more complicated and tedious than they actually are? Human resource folks please take a good look at this!

Here’s another beautiful form example.

Beautiful forms in Microsoft Excel

Entering data is one of the most common tasks performed in Microsoft Excel. That must the reason that Microsoft Excel 2007 has provided thousands of downloadable form templates. You can see them by clicking on the Office Button->New.

Sadly, few of them inspires me enough to take them seriously. While all of them are functional, none of them looked good. This is a typical ugly example:

I feel that entry forms in Microsoft Excel doesn’t have to be all clinical in boring blues and black. Why not inspire your users with good ideas like brighter colours and eye-freindly layouts. Think deeper into the entry process that makes business sense like highlighting useful instructions and highlight error entries. Think of creative ways to cut out the weariness of repeative entries.

There are many hard copy examples I can find which can be translated into Excel! Here are some. I will create a new blog section devoted to this topic. Do check in regularly.

Singapore General Election Results 2011 Microsoft Excel Chart-Part2

This is an alternative interpretation of my previous Excel chart on the 2011 Singapore General Election results by James C Lee.

Below was my original version in a previous post.

In many ways, it is a better version compared to mine. The tight Excel chart was able to show with clarity specific election results between the People’s Action Party with the various opposition in all 26 constituencies. The colour used in the chart was in sync with the chart title which enhanced clarity. The best part of this chart was at a glance, it could tell which side was the clear winner, and when studied in detail each row was a blow by blow account of the election results.

Singapore General Election Results 2011 in an Excel Chart

This is an Excel chart to summarise the lastest election results of Singapore. The People’s Action Party has won almost every contested area in Singapore. They secured 81 out of 87 seats against the total opposition.  Total popular vote share of PAP: 60.1%

Click to see the full pic:

Download an animated powerpoint version here.

Automate Excel with VBA programming to reduce errors

Having worked as a business analyst I always have this fear of undiscovered errors when I present my Excel reports to my management. Recently, while working on an Excel project, I uncovered about 10 cells of calculation errors in a forecasting spreadsheet. The executive manually compiles this forecast for a logistic oriented company. He needs to manually calculate 30-50 values using pivot tables and copy them into an Excel report template.

Studies have shown that Excel spreadsheet errors are extremely common. Humans appear to have an error rate floor (ERF) that exists even when they are working very carefully. Everyone has a similar error rate floor, and working more carefully can decrease one’s error rate only modestly. Not a very comforting thought when you are working on an important spreadsheet.

My strongest advice to clients is to automate the most tedious and error prone parts of your Excel spreadsheets to reduce such calculation errors. I always argued that such revamped Excel application can be proven to give productivity gains. The calculated savings will be a key decision factor in whether you find it worthwhile to go forward in this project. Key variables in estimating cost of your present reporting process can include: (reporting freq per month) * (time needed) * (no of people involved) * (potential costs in reporting errors). The future gains will certainly exceed the present costs.

Excel Chart of Nuclear Radiation Levels near Fukushima

On Friday 11 March 2011 a 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake off the coast of Japan caused crippling damage to nuclear reactors at the Fukushima I and II Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma. Fears of significant radiation leaks led to a massive evacuation for over 45,000 people in the area.

Japan has released some data about radioactivity levels around the Fukushima nuclear plants.

I reinterpreted the original chart into a heat map using Excel. Using large “bubbles” and a gradient colour scheme I emphasized each data point and showed how radiation “cools” as time goes by in this Excel chart.

Charts in FundSuperMart suck!

FundSuperMart is a Singapore produced magazine covering investment insights and trends on mutual funds. I picked up a copy at a 7-11 store and thumbed it through. I liked the articles. They appear thoughtfully written and are supported by charts.

The glaring problem is every chart looked amateurish. I have the feeling they were created by some 2nd year college student from an engineering faculty. It’s hard to have kind words when I see charts like these:

Axis labels that are bigger than the columns in the chart! What a waste of editorial space for nothing of value.

This is worse. The combined space for the labels and legend is bigger than the chart itself. They could have devoted the space to comment on the trend instead.

It’s obvious the magazine is fond of using legends and coloured lines. But it adds clutter and makes me seasick constantly having to flit my eyes between the legend and the line charts.

Florescence green, lime green and purple. This chart is more colourful than a bag of M&Ms. This magazine does not have a consistent visual style for charts which IMO adds clutter and confusion to the reader.

Pie charts with too many slices cannot show distinct distribution patterns. Charts that do not have strong messages are pointless!

At the last page there is an infographic that tries to present some global population facts. I got lost after Gender…

Frankly, I can’t take this magazine seriously like a Bloomberg publication if they continue to produce slipshod charts like these.

Create Beautiful Slides like Steve Jobs (in PowerPoint!)

Steve Jobs will never be caught with an ugly slide during a MacWorld Expo! His presentation slides like all Apple products are always beautifully simple. Such slides are easy to create, easy to deliver and easy to be understood by everyone.

To create slides like Steve Job is easy in PowerPoint:
1. Insert a blank slide.
2. Apply a 3-stop gradient fill to the slide background.
3. Set stop-1 to black.
4. Set stop-2 to a dark blue.
5. Set stop-3 to a lighter shade of dark blue.
6. Use san-serif fonts like Myriad to imitate typography of Apple products else Arial font is a good approximation.


You should get this:



To learn more about how to create beautiful slides like these in PowerPoint, check out this workshop: PowerPoint Design Ideas

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