Last updated on Mar 19, 2024
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Know your data
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Know your audience
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Choose the right visual elements
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Use narrative and interactivity
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Test and refine your design
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Here’s what else to consider
Data visualization design is the art and science of creating effective and engaging visual representations of data. Whether you want to communicate insights, persuade audiences, or explore patterns, data visualization design can help you achieve your goals. But how do you master this skill? Here are some of the most important principles to learn and apply.
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- Himanshu Tagare Data Scientist at Spotflock || Data Science || Machine Learning || Deep Learning || NLP || Generative AI
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- Jane Blackman Business data advocate, Data Governance and Transformation Strategist, Data Practice Director
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1 Know your data
Before you start designing, you need to understand your data. What type of data are you working with? What are the main variables, dimensions, and measures? How are they related and distributed? What are the outliers and anomalies? These questions will help you choose the most appropriate visualization techniques, such as charts, maps, graphs, or tables. You also need to consider the quality and accuracy of your data, and how to handle missing or incomplete values.
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- Jane Blackman Business data advocate, Data Governance and Transformation Strategist, Data Practice Director
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All data is important, but all data is not equally important! Focusing on the most valuable data, in a way that the business can understand, helps to eliminate the 'so what?' that business stakeholders sometimes feel when presented with a load of data dashboards....
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At this point everyone has heard “know your data, know your audience, choose a good chart type.”At my company we try to go beyond those platitudes and teach data visualization principles such as expressiveness and effectiveness.Expressiveness means that the data is encoded in visual form in a way that expresses what’s in the data, and doesn’t express what’s not in the data. For example categories with order (e.g. gold/silver/bronze) are shown to have order.Effectiveness means that the data visualization achieves its objective, whatever that may be. If the ability to make accurate guesses about the proportions in the data is critical, then encodings like position or length are going to be more effective than angle or color saturation.
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- Himanshu Tagare Data Scientist at Spotflock || Data Science || Machine Learning || Deep Learning || NLP || Generative AI
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Mastering data visualization design requires clarity, accuracy, and relevance. Simplify complex data sets, ensuring clear representation without distortion. Maintain consistency in design elements for a cohesive look and establish hierarchy to guide attention effectively. Engage viewers with interactive features and compelling storytelling. Ensure accessibility for all users and provide context to enhance understanding. Seek feedback to refine designs and continuously learn about emerging trends and best practices. By adhering to these principles, you can create impactful visualizations that communicate insights, engage audiences, and drive informed decision-making.
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2 Know your audience
Another key principle is to know your audience. Who are they, and what do they need to know? What is their level of expertise and interest in your topic? How will they access and interact with your visualization? These questions will help you tailor your design to suit your audience's needs and expectations. You also need to consider the context and purpose of your visualization, and how to convey your message clearly and persuasively.
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- Stuart Mack Senior Manager Business Intelligence at Lloyds Banking Group
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Understanding your audience is critical to creating the correct visualisation. What is appropriate for a highly data literate consumer compared to a novice can be vastly different, but the same key concept will apply to both, if the consumer has to work too hard to understand your visual then you've missed the mark.
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- Shashank Sahu SQL Server | Microsoft PowerBI | DAX | Excel | Ex-InfoCepts | LinkedIn Content Contributor
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The second step after understanding data is to know and understand your audience. Who are the audience, What they exactly want, What is their level of expertise, and so on. This will help you in knowing what exactly you need to focus on and explain them such that they can understand what you are explaining.
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3 Choose the right visual elements
Once you have a clear idea of your data and audience, you can start choosing the visual elements that will make up your visualization. These include the shapes, colors, sizes, positions, and labels that you use to represent your data. You need to select these elements carefully, based on the type and scale of your data, and the relationships and patterns you want to highlight. You also need to avoid clutter, confusion, and distortion, and follow the best practices of visual perception and cognition.
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- Fernando A. Severino M Data Analyst | Business Intelligence | SQL | Power BI | MS Excel Advanced | Python | 📈📊
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Choosing the right visual elements is crucial in data visualization design. Each type of data and each story you want to tell requires a unique visual approach. From bar and line charts to maps and scatter plots, selecting visual elements should align with communication goals and data characteristics. Are you showcasing trends over time? A line chart might be the best choice. Are you comparing different categories? A bar chart or scatter plot could be more effective. By choosing the right visual elements, you can highlight key information clearly and effectively, facilitating your audience's understanding and interpretation of the data.
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Never use pie charts. The human brain has a tough time error perceiving sizes in a non square ratio. Pie charts are heritage from the past, and unfortunately still used. Sometimes in a new jacket called 'donut chart', but the message still stands. There are simpler alternatives: A bar chart when comparing sizes of the individual members, and a treemap to compare all members and the size of the total population.
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4 Use narrative and interactivity
Another principle that can enhance your data visualization design is to use narrative and interactivity. Narrative is the way you structure and sequence your visualization, to tell a story or guide your audience through your data. You can use narrative techniques such as titles, captions, annotations, transitions, and scenarios, to provide context, explanation, and direction. Interactivity is the way you allow your audience to explore and manipulate your visualization, to discover their own insights or answer their own questions. You can use interactivity techniques such as filters, sliders, buttons, tooltips, and zooms, to provide flexibility, feedback, and engagement.
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5 Test and refine your design
The final principle is to test and refine your design. You need to evaluate your visualization from different perspectives, such as functionality, usability, aesthetics, and impact. You can use various methods to test your design, such as self-review, peer-review, user-testing, or expert-review. You can also use tools and metrics to measure your design, such as performance, accuracy, readability, or satisfaction. Based on the feedback and results, you can identify and fix any issues or errors, and improve your design accordingly.
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- Suely Messias Analista de Dados | Analytics | Python | Pyspark | SQL | BigQuery | Power BI | Excel
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Na minha trajetória de estudos e práticas o importante em visualização de dados incluem também:Simplicidade e clareza, evitar o excesso de informações que possam sobrecarregar o espectador. Escolher os elementos visuais que comunicam a mensagem de forma direta e eficaz.Acessibilidade, certificar-se de que sua visualização seja acessível para todos os tipos de público, incluindo pessoas com deficiências visuais ou cognitivas. Utilizando técnicas como contraste adequado, legendas descritivas e opções de zoom para garantir que todos possam compreender a informação apresentada.
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6 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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- Celeste Smith Ph.D. Candidate at the University of St Andrews
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Data is only as valuable as it is presented. In my experience, it is essential to create charts, tables etc. whose main points can be easily interpreted without outside commentary. This is an especially important aspect to master for scientific conferences and poster sessions as your data needs to present itself at times when you may not be around to answer questions. So, how does one do this? Make a visual line through whatever kind of medium you are using to showcase your data and keep it consistent. Just like knowing where to start reading a book or an article, it should be evident where your story starts and ends. Overall, while you are the expert on the data, make sure it always has an active role in its presentation.
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Mastering the fundamentals of data warehousing, including fact tables, dimension tables, joins, and cardinality, is essential for data visualisation. This strong foundation not only aids in overcoming career challenges but also enhances analytical capabilities. Strengthening these core concepts is paramount for success in the field of data analytics. 📊💡 #DataFoundations #AnalyticsSkills #CareerGrowth
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