Overall
Ribbon charts are very similar to stacked area charts or heatmaps – they allow you to see several different channels of data over time.
They are also very similar to surface charts, but where both heatmaps and surface charts blend all of the different channels of data together, ribbon charts keep them distinct, so they are more easily identified.
In many ways, the difference between a ribbon chart and a surface or heatmap is similar to the difference between a bar chart and a line chart.
Example
In this example, we can see machine speed over time for a number of different assets. Unlike a line chart (that is often very difficult to read if there are 5 or more channels), the depth of the ribbons makes it very easy to read each individual channel.
You can find this example on our paint line demo site.
Tips and Tricks
- This example uses colour to group each of the ribbons together (since each machine has two distinct parts). You could also use colour to show an additional variable, allowing you to see two values at once. This works best if the two values are related to one-another.
See Others
3D visualisationsHeatmap visualisations
Infographic visualisations
Surface visualisations