More organizations are turning to 3D data visualizations, which show data sets in rich three-dimensional representations, to make deciphering complex information much easier. Businesses produce an ever-growing volume of multidimensional and unstructured data that are impossible to fully analyze and understand using flat images and charts.

Innovations in AI-driven analytics platforms help analysts render large and diverse data sets in engaging 3D visualizations, enabling them to more easily process, analyze, and draw strategy-driving insights for the business. Exceptional platforms can even help users find insights within those visualizations.

Let’s dive into why 3D data visualizations are such a game-changer for data analysis.

Why Are 3D Visualizations Essential For Data Analysis?

3D data visualizations leverage the human brain's innate ability to process and understand information more quickly and accurately when an image has depth and spatial context. These types of visualizations empower business analysts to explore enormous quantities of data and find meaningful insights that would be otherwise impossible to grasp in 2D.

Rather than sifting through numbers and tables on a flat table, an analyst can look at far more data attributes in one image, examine these from different angles, and spot patterns and correlations more clearly. Analytics tools like the Virtualitics AI Platform, for example, even enable users to move and zoom into 3D visualizations, giving them a more intuitive way to investigate the data.

For example, Virtualitics also created a more immersive experience with its 3D visualizations, which helped researchers at the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory better examine relationships between points of data, proving that with the right picture the data analysis can be exponentially elevated.

What Are the Benefits of 3D Visualizations?

Rich 3D visualizations increase engagement and understanding by bringing data stories to life in the following ways:

1. Enhancing Depth Perception

By depicting multidimensional data in three dimensions, analysts can investigate the spatial relationships between their data more easily. For example, a 3D chart or cube can show how different attributes interact in a way that a flat image can’t convey. This depth perception is invaluable in understanding any intricate relationships and patterns.

2. Improving Contextual Understanding

To put it simply, lots of dimensions deliver lots of information, increasing the potential for discovering answers as a result. Whether it’s examining market trends over time or visualizing the varied layers of data in a supply chain, looking at it from three dimensions allows for a more nuanced and contextual analysis—and enables business leaders to make informed decisions based on a deeper understanding of their available data.

3. Adds New Angles to Analysis

Being able to dynamically explore data in 3D provides a more immersive and personalized experience for data analysts. They can quickly customize their perspectives, zoom in on specific data points, and manipulate visual elements in real-time. With a more hands-on approach, analysts can be more confident they’re pulling the right insights out of the data set.

Challenges to Using 3D Data Visualizations

Simply put, the benefits of 3D visualizations far outweigh the few pitfalls that exist. Still, there are two potential challenges to be aware of:

1. Data Misinterpretation

With more data points to examine, there’s a chance that it could be interpreted incorrectly and the wrong conclusions are drawn. This is why providing proper context—both during analysis and when providing reports to stakeholders—is key.

2. Poor User Experience

The tools that create 3D data visualizations are not all built the same. With data science teams often inundated with competing priorities, business analysts are in the best position to help do deep data analysis, so long as they have user-friendly technology that complements their growing data science skills.

Virtualitics leverages AI and a native 3D application to overcome these two challenges and automatically guide business analysts to key insights and explain the visualization in plain language so nothing gets missed. The platform also shares strategic insight with annotated discoveries and clear explanations for all stakeholders so nothing gets left to interpretation. With powerful AI applications right inside the Virtualitics AI Platform, users can then put their data to work using apps tailored to their objectives.

Business Use Cases for 3D Visualizations

AI-driven analytics platforms like Virtualitics make it easy for businesses to leverage the power of 3D visualizations with the push of a button. Here are a few use cases:

1. Financial Risk Management

Portfolio management becomes more intuitive in three dimensions, empowering investors to examine multiple factors simultaneously, enhancing the accuracy of predictions, and minimizing risk.

Trade execution slippage is a major problem for financial institutions, resulting in issues like reduced profits, a loss of confidence, and portfolio damage. It’s also not uncommon for the datasets to include between 300 and 400 variables in every trade, which becomes much easier to interpret using 3D visualizations that can be zoomed into and moved around in real-time. With this type of analytics tool, traders and investors can identify key trends, such as the times of day when a particular stock is most volatile, and the order types that are most likely to experience slippage.

2. Targeted Customer Marketing

Customer marketing data involves a wide range of data sets, from demographics to behavior trends to detailed information about a customer’s past interactions with your brand.

While 2D visualizations would fail to properly show all the interplay between these attributes, 3D visualizations enable marketing analysts to see more of the connections and correlations. For example, do most shoppers look at 10 products before purchasing? What do they click on when evaluating a product—the details, pricing, reviews? With this information, you can determine the best user experience for your website to lead customers towards conversion.

3. Supply Chain Optimization

Supply chains are made up of so many varied and disparate systems that it’s vital to have a single, streamlined view of all that data to create an accurate analysis. Examining the full picture as a solid, 3D image helps analysts see where the biggest logistical risks and opportunities lie. Whether it’s transportation departure and arrival times or manufacturing equipment maintenance logs, a more immersive experience enables businesses to make proactive decisions, ultimately improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Bring Complex Insight into Focus with 3D Visualizations

Data-driven decisions are the key to gaining a competitive advantage in today’s business landscape. With AI-generated 3D data visualizations to help make sense of large and complex data sets, analysts can intelligently explore all the angles and provide better, actionable insights to business leaders. The future of data analysis is undeniably solid when viewed in clearer, more immersive three dimensions! Learn more about the Virtualitics AI Platform.