After reading the the WSJ Guide to Informaiton Graphics by Dona Wong I realized we could make the horizontal bar chart much easier to read with slight adjustments to the complete bar labels. The book lists a number of Dos and Don'ts for how to present data, with focus on financial data. This seems very relevant for dashboard scenarios.
This concerns the horizontal bar chart only:
1) Make sure complete bar labels are always displayed outside the bars to make it easy to compare the numbers across bars. The current heuristic to display labels for the widest bars inside the bars if possible saves space, but gives an assymetry that makes it harder to scan the numbers.
2) Make sure complete bar labels are never truncated. Right now complete bar labels for the widest bars become truncated sometimes, and you cannot get rid of the ellipsis by resizing the visualization.
3) Give the user the option to right adjust the complete bar labels so they form a straight column for easy comparison across the bars.
The current design of labels and their placement seem optimized for interactive use, to make best use of the available screen estate. With these easy changes I think the horizontal bar chart will become a better dashboard citizen, showing better "at a glance" access to key data.
