Data visualization is a powerful tool that can help you put in a visual footprint your thoughts, ideas, and findings and thus make them appealing and easy to understand.
Data visualization lets you narrate the story behind the numbers and bring out all of the strengths or weaknesses of the topic you are presenting.
However, people often get misguided and put things in the wrong order.
Most people start with the visualization and consider using a pie chart, a graph, or a map to display their information. However, they should do quite the opposite — determine the information they want to present and then find the best visualization tool to present it.
To help you stay on the right track and not make the same mistake yourself, we’ll outline ten ways that can help you achieve the best results with your data visualization. Enjoy the ride!
1. Understand your audience
Before you start visualizing your data, make sure you know whom you are targeting with this information. In other words, you need to answer a few questions:
- How will your audience understand and interpret the information you present? Do they understand the concept and the terminology you will be using, or do you have to describe as well through clues in your visualization?
- What does your audience expect to see in this presentation, and what information will be most useful to them?
- What is the role of your visualization? How can viewers take action from it?
Visualization can be categorized based on its function. For example, while educational visualization aims to explain, exploratory visualization should encourage viewers to ask more questions and explore even more.
2. Be clear about the goal you want to achieve
Unfortunately, for some strange reason, people don’t set up a clear goal they want to achieve with data visualization. And, the first thing you should do is set the clear purpose of your data.
The easiest way to set a goal is to ask yourself a few crucial questions like:
- What questions are you trying to answer?
- How will your information help the audience?
- What are you trying to accomplish through your visualization?
- What is the message you are trying to convey?
By answering these questions, you will get a clear view of the things you want to achieve and be able to measure your success properly.
3. Set up a clear framework
A designer working on a data visualization solution has a clear framework that includes syntax and semantics, enabling people to interpret the data in the best possible way.
At its core, semantics involves the meaning of graphics and words, and syntax represents the communication structure.
For instance, the icons should be following the thing they represent. Likewise, as essential elements of data visualization, bars and lines should connect, contain, and separate.
Finally, once you create your data visualization, it is vital that you make sure your data does not have holes in it and that you spot all nuances.
Get to know your data, as this will allow you to set and use the appropriate framework.
If any of this seems daunting, the best agencies offering custom web design Chicago can help you build an outstanding framework so that you can focus on other things that matter.
4. Understand your data
As we have already mentioned, you must understand your data. Why? A dataset might have hundreds of columns, and those might be very difficult to follow for some people.
To avoid this scenario, get familiar with all the variables, what they mean, what they represent, and how important they are.
This will help you filter out the columns you need for your data visualization. This will also help you figure out if you need to make any modifications.
Here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself here to simplify this process:
- What does each variable represent?
- What do you need to modify to solve the problem?
- What variable do you need to use to be able to solve the problem?
5. Tell a story through your visualization
There’s no better way to present a specific topic and tell a story than through visualization.
Stories and visualization package the information in an easy-to-memorize format, especially when the story contains a lot of data.
The goal is to help the viewer quickly capture the data, understand it, and use it.
Design techniques play a major role in helping end-users interpret the necessary information in the right way. This is why designers need to make sure they understand the data and connect it to the target audience.
Good designers are excellent at picking the right graph and creating a story that would communicate the necessary data to the audience.
6. Develop your visualization
Now that you have clearly defined your goals and the audience you will present your data visualization to, you can move on to developing your visualization.
There are a few types of data visualization you can use:
- Bar charts — If you are planning to make a comparison of your data, bar charts are just the right tool for that
- Maps — You can visualize data using maps and provide end-users with a better understanding of geographical locations
- Pie Charts — To explain the percentage of something, it’s best to use a pie chart — it’s an ideal format for showing the composition
- Gantt Charts — For a project schedule or an activity over time, it’s best you use Gantt charts.
Of course, these are only some formats you can use for your data visualization. But, whichever you choose, it must be the one that will perfectly demonstrate the data you want to present.
7. Be careful with the colors
Color is a critical component of successful data visualization. If you fail to use the right colors, your data visualization may distract and even misdirect the reader.
So here are a few tips on how to use colors in the best possible way:
- Use one color to represent the same type of data or use an accent color to emphasize significant data point
- Make sure you use the right color for positive numbers (green). The same applies to negative numbers (red). You don’t want to make your readers misinterpret the meaning of colors
- Ensure you create a significant contrast between colors
- Don’t use patterns. If you want to differentiate some data, try to use different saturations instead of patterns
- Don’t use more than six colors in one layout
Don’t do it yourself if you are not sure you will not achieve the best results. Instead, consider working with the pros, and hiring a San Diego web design agency can make your data visualization stand out.
8. Use the right labeling
Labeling can play a huge role in data visualization, but it is also vital that you don’t use too much labeling or too little. It would help if you found the right balance.
So, here are a few important steps you need to make when using labeling:
- Make sure everything is labeled
- Keep in mind that labels need to be visible to your target audience
- Label the lines directly
- Don’t use too many labels as this may lead to confusion — use the labels that will enhance the comprehension
- Remove all the unnecessary labels to allow the text to fit comfortably
9. Sort data to improve readability
Another way to make data easy to comprehend is to sort it.
Sorting your data can be done in a few following ways:
- Descending — You sort data from the highest to the lowest
- Ascending — You sort data from the lowest to the highest
- Alphabetic — You sort data alphabetically
- Manual — You sort data manually, the way you prefer
10. Test
Finally, the last important step is to test your data visualization to identify the gaps and potential room for improvement.
When developing, people tend to make assumptions and then deliver the final solution based on those assumptions. However, in reality, things may seem completely different.
You may need another pair of eyes to take a look at the data visualization to know what to adapt, change, and work on to improve your data.
Wrapping Up
So, let’s sum things up. If you want to achieve outstanding results with your data visualization, you need to use the following tips and tricks:
- Understand your audience
- Be clear about the goal you want to achieve
- Set up a clear framework
- Understand your data
- Tell a story through your visualization
- Develop your visualization
- Be careful with the colors
- Use the right labelling
- Sort data to improve readability
- Test
So, make the first step. It’s simple, and it’s definitely worth it!
Author bio:
Tomas is a digital marketing specialist and a freelance blogger. His work is focusing on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels.
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