If You Only Get One Chance...Make it Count!

Not too long ago,  had the pleasure of co-teaching a data visualization workshop at the Data Matters Workshop Series at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Rachael Brady (formerly of the Duke Visualization Center). Rachel delivered a great presentation covering some fairly advanced aspects of the visualization process. While I took in a ton, one quote really stuck out.

“You get one chance.”

In the world of data visualization and specifically dashboard design, you’ve got one chance and typically one chance only to win over your audience. Your work must come across a clear and professional. So attention to detail is paramount.

Every pixel on our screen, every drop of ink on our canvas should be applied with conscious intention. The same is true for every pixel we exclude. And every decision should be based on communicating the clear message we intend to deliver to answer our stakeholder’s questions.

So what does that mean for us as designers? It means understanding and applying visualization best practices. There’s too many to list in this blog but I’ll provide a good starter sample below. PLEASE comment with suggestions you feel strongly about as well.

• When we apply color we do so for a specific reason, not to make it prettier
• When we add legends, make sure the entire legend is visible
• When we add value labels, think about the formats and decimal places
• When we add titles we make them meaningful and dynamic if the scope can change
• When we want to compare values across multiple slices we choose the right chart type and not force your audience to compare a series of pie charts
• When we build in interactivity, the interactivity works exactly as we expect to which requires testing each option
• When we build in interactivity, it’s clear how the interactivity works
• When we build dashboards we consider the layout of the canvas and we don’t clutter it with unnecessary banners and logos, the filtering is intuitive in positioned appropriately, the most important visual is in the upper left and the need to scroll is minimized. White space can have a huge impact.

And most importantly, what we end up with should tell the story we intend to tell without the need for human intervention. My suggestion here is that we hand our drafts over to someone else to see if they are receiving the message we are attempting to deliver. And while they’re at it, ask them to challenge the visual design aspect as well.

These tips should help our dashboards go from good to great!

Cheers,

Kevin Taylor