By default Oracle Analytics data visualization projects are responsive by default and this is great so authors generally don’t have to worry about device, device size, or screen resolution. Right?

Above is an example of some to the beautiful screenshot I see on social media showing off an authors work, but this sort of layout can break down pretty quickly. Here is what happens when the browser is resized.

As you can see the visuals all respond and now are really hard to read. It can get worse if this is brought up on a projector with poor resolution support or opened on a tablet in portrait orientation.

Introduce Scrolling

So why not let the user scroll and account for the various aspect ratios that might be encounter. Using canvas properties this can easily be done by keeping auto fit on and setting the height or width to a custom size.

Just by giving the canvas the freedom to scroll vertically the visuals show up better in the same size window as the example above. As an author I want to do better so keeping mind my target user, their devices, and default screen resolutions (often you do not know) I have arranged things with the following in mind:

• Put key information on top and keep like information close.
• Usually more than three performance tiles in one row is too much.
• Pie, donut, and radar charts are normally good for small spaces.
• Horizontal charts are best wide while most vertical charts are just fine tall and narrow.

No magic rule just some good, basic guidelines, and you get something that looks and scrolls like this.

This will work on most small screens and even on tablets in portrait mode! Keep in mind data visualization projects are adaptive but only on the phone where we have not choice but to neatly stack everything. For all other devices the author should take some care when laying things out but as you can see it does not require a lot of work.

Hope it helps and here is the exported .dva file if you want to give this a try.