Questions to help you to understand whether your visualisation is useful/powerful
For any visualisation - where we are trying to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means - we suggest the following points are considered:
- Does the visualisation clearly convey your message? Can it be improved? Challenge yourself to make the visualisation simpler and clearer - trial it on colleagues before presenting to your main audience.
- Visualisations should have a clear title and, perhaps, a subtitle - They should stand on their own without relying on supporting text in your report. A good test is that if a visualisation is printed out or looked at a year from now, is it clear what the visualisation is about, what data and time periods it relates to, etc
- Does the visualisation answer the question posed by your audience?
- Have you chosen the right type of visualisation? There is nothing wrong with a simple bar chart!
- Chart or table? If you want to show trends use a chart, if you want your audience to look row/column values then use a (well-formatted) table
- Can your audience understand and interpret the visualisation quickly? (eg, within 15 seconds). If not, then it's possible that your graph is too complicated - remove any clutter
- Does it help to label specific features or add key messages in boxed text?
- Will the user ask a subsequent question after viewing your visualisation? If so, then do we need some supplementary visualisation (eg, a separate graph or an overlaid line graph) or more detailed labelling of values?
- Would your visualisation benefit from any form of data grouping? For example, would plotting cashflows in annual buckets be clearer than monthly buckets?
- Does the visualisation make due consideration to all your users? Eg, a visualisation with lots of different colours may not be understood by individuals who are colour blind.
- Is the style and design of your visualisation sufficiently future-proof or may it change next time? Users get used to seeing certain types of information. If your visualisation changes month-on-month then the communication may be weaker.
