The map chart can be used for any form of spatial analysis. For a simple application, all you need is a base image and some coordinate data. Think of the base image as the map layer and the coordinate data as a marker layer. With the right software, you could create relevant shapefiles and use them as a feature layer.

The base image could be a process diagram, a semiconductor wafer, an immunoassay plate, or a baseball field. It can be an image of anything of interest to you that is stable and fixed in time and upon which you can reliably plot data markers, which will be the variable part of your analysis. The markers could be process stage timings, semiconductor wafer failures, immunoassay well results, or stats for different baseball positions. The markers can be numbers, colors, or even mini pie charts.

There are a number of stages to creating a spatial visualization: