Harvey Balls

Harvey Balls are round pictograms used in comparison tables to indicate the degree to which a particular item meets a particular criterion. They are particularly useful to visually convey qualitative information.

For example, in a comparison of two products, information such as price or weight can be conveyed numerically, and information such as the existence or lack of a feature can be conveyed with a check mark; however, information such as "quality" or "safety" or "taste" is often difficult to summarize in a manner allowing easy comparison---thus, Harvey Balls are used.

Harvey Poppel is generally credited with inventing Harvey Balls in the 1970s while working at Booz Allen Hamilton as a consultant. [ [http://digitalroam.typepad.com/digital_roam/2006/03/harvey_balls_ha.html Digital Roam] - The Back of the Napkin Blog]

Mr. Poppel's specialty was office worker productivity. He did a great deal of productivity work using clocks that pinged every 6 minutes so office personnel could note what they were doing throughout the day. On a side note, it is claimed that Harvey Poppel invented voicemail; although the exact date is unclear. [ [http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=29050 Google Answers] ]

Harvey Balls has nothing to do with Harvey Ball, the inventor of the smiley face.

Harvey Balls Font

A common implementation of Harvey Balls is via a [http://www.ambor.com/public/hb/harveyballs.html Harvey Balls Font] . This is typically implemented such that the numbers 0-9 map to a particular Harvey Ball. Incorporating the Harvey Ball into a document then becomes a matter of selecting the number which corresponds to the desired Harvey Ball and setting the font to Harvey Ball. The three primary benefits of this approach are 1) that the Harvey Balls are of uniform appearance; 2) the Harvey Balls can be manipulated like any other font (e.g. color, size, underline) and 3) that Harvey Balls can be made variable in a spreadsheet. The main drawback of this approach is that the font either needs to be embedded in the document or all the viewers of the document must have the font installed.

Harvey Balls in SVG

The use of SVG to render Harvey Balls allows them to be easily used in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG#Support_for_SVG_in_web_browsers web browsers] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG#Support_in_applications applications] that support the XML vector graphics format. The benefit is that no special font is required and the Harvey Balls can be displayed using an open format. The main drawback is that SVG is not universally supported and the SVG version of Harvey Balls are not as easy to work with in common office applications such as Powerpoint.

Harvey Balls in Unicode

The use of Unicode to render Harvey Balls has the benefit of not requiring a font to be installed, however the Unicode Harvey Balls are more difficult to work with in presentation software such as Powerpoint and are not rendered uniformly.

The Unicode set of related symbols includes:

Modifications & Other Uses

Consumer Reports is well known for using a modified type of Harvey Ball in product ratings and has even incorporated one into their logo. [ [http://www.consumerreports.org/ Consumer Reports] ]

IBM uses a modified version in their Lotus Notes product as recipient icons to show whether the recipient of a piece of mail is the sole recipient, a copied recipient, etc. [ [http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth?entry=new_recipient_icons IBM DeveloperWorks Blog] ]

Other alternative uses of the Harvey Ball symbols include [ [http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/24/index.html Symbols.com] - Online Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms] :

References

External links

* [http://www.ambor.com/public/hb/harveyballs.html http://www.ambor.com] - A free version of the Harvey Balls Font