Data visualization is an art and it has gives everyone to show their capabilities of their unique identities. It can also cause lot of pain if the person does not care to learn about the fundemantals.
One of the most overlooked and common mistake in this field is basically using green and red at the same data visualization. I’ve seen over and over with high executive meetings, online, many other places almost every day if you look closely.
Unfortunately, few people have the vision of an eagle which causes a lot of pain to viewer as well as it also raises other problems. Safety is the number one concern. Try to look from other person's eyes. You are in a room full of people. Someone pulls up a data visualization chart with a bunch of red and greens. Unfortunately, you are most likely will not speak up. It’s the fault of the presenter for assuming everyone is same as him/her.
Unfortunately, people with color blindness can not get a piloting licence and each country has different restrictions on this topic. Knowing the capabilities of the tools you are using can come in handy. Some of the visualization tools currently offer to support for color blinds but just don’t expect your audience to figure out before you begin let your audience to know how to set their computer to see visuals at their preference.
Once you assume your audience capabilities you will overlook the some of the fundemantal aspect of data visualizations.
Keep it simple if you have time restrictions and don’t know the educational background of the audience. Expecting everyone to become Einstein while you presenting is a little hard on each person who attending it. Because of this reason you should pick visualization that people are used to see. This will allow you to present in a timely manner without telling what each piece of the visualization meant for the audience.
If your purpose is to wow the audience. You can always be more creative if you have any graphic design experience but remember just because you want to wow the audience doesn’t mean you should pull up something that it’s hard to understand and clutter to the human eye which will bring us to next bullet point.
Always remember the who you talking to and keep it simple and elegant rule.
Use white space to your advantage. Many websites these days, including this, use a white space between each sector. This will give human eye ease of reading and skimming through your website. Every good thing needs to be restricted to some space when you go beyond. It will look uninteresting and poorly designed.
Studying UI design for a little will improve your capabilities to design highly thoughtful data visualizations.
At ENWY, our goal is to help each organization be aware of these details so they will give the impression of attention to detail whenever they present anything. I hope these little details will help you achieve better and improve the safety wherever you work.
