Whether you’re analyzing patient outcomes, tracking academic trends, or gathering insights from donor demographics, data visualization can be a valuable tool for any organization. Visual representations of your data can enhance your understanding of the information, highlight patterns and trends, and bolster decision-making as your organization acts on these insights.
Improved data exploration through visualization requires keen data management, meaning your organization must employ the right strategies to gain value from its data. Let’s explore key data visualization do’s and don’ts to transform your communication and align your team.
Do: Understand your audience
Tailor your data visualizations to meet your audience’s specific needs and preferences so that the insights resonate with them. For example, a healthcare professional should determine whether information from their healthcare data platform should be presented to clinicians, researchers, or analysts. The answer will guide which data points to prioritize and how in-depth these visualizations should be.
To identify your audience and tailor visualizations to their needs, use the following strategies:
- Identify stakeholders: Determine who will interact with your data visualizations, such as internal team members, constituents, or other stakeholders. Use surveys, interviews, audience data, and other research methods to learn more about your target audience and their data visualization needs and expectations.
- Create segments: Based on your research, group audience members based on shared characteristics such as their level of expertise, role or job function, or the intended purpose or use case they’d likely receive from the presented data.
- Map the data journey: Determine how each audience segment interacts with your data by mapping their workflows and identifying key touchpoints. This could include noting different points of data exploration, such as filtering data views or comparing specific charts.
After determining your audience, have colleagues review your results to bring a fresh perspective to your audience research. Peer review provides diverse backgrounds and expertise to ensure you’ve considered every aspect of your audience members.
Don’t: Overcomplicate your data
Depending on the type of data your organization collects, your data visualizations can quickly become complex and hard to follow. Additionally, disorganized data or disconnected databases might make it difficult for audience members to draw conclusions.
Avoid complex visualizations that confuse or overwhelm your audience. Instead, make your presentations easy to understand by following these best practices:
- Organize your data: Before creating any visualizations, ensure your data is properly managed by integrating platforms or consulting a professional. Well-organized data provides a clear framework for analyzing information, making it easier to create intuitive data visualizations.
- Choose the right format: Align data with the appropriate chart type to ensure complex information is easily readable. Choosing the right visualization also makes it easier to compare charts and interpret complex information.
- Provide additional references: Offer additional resources for audience members to explore alongside your data visualizations, such as real-world examples of the data in action or tutorials that explain how to read the chart. Remember to remove unnecessary details from the visualization itself so that these additional references don’t overshadow your findings.
You can create easily understandable visualizations by using concise labels and avoiding visual clutter. Break down complex data into smaller parts and focus on only relevant information to simplify your graphs and charts. Aggregating usable data into a comprehensive warehouse can further ensure you only present relevant and significant information.
Also, use consistent design elements to provide a sense of predictability across different charts. This way, your audience will be familiar with different design patterns and able to interpret different types of charts.
Do: Provide adequate context
Relevant background information and explanations can help your audience understand the data’s significance and impact on decision-making. For example, nonprofit data collection over time may reveal performance patterns that help organization leaders make informed decisions to increase their impact.
Depending on how comprehensive your platform is, you should have access to additional data to contextualize your visualizations. Use the following collected insights to frame your presentation:
- Trends over time: Trends offer a historical perspective that allows your audience to understand recurring cycles and patterns. Applying this insight to current progress allows audience members to make informed decisions and anticipate future outcomes. It also helps to identify external factors that may impact data patterns.
- Industry benchmarks and comparisons: Consider the larger trends at play that impact your results. Industry benchmarks can help audience members compare your organization’s performance against industry standards and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that help set realistic goals.
- Geographic context: Location-specific insights provide context for geographic differences and localized factors that impact your decision-making. Spatial data may include natural landmarks, administrative boundaries, or other insights depending on your industry.
Beyond the improvement in data exploration and decision-making, adequate context can also reduce misinterpretation when analyzing visualizations. Additional trends, benchmarks, and geographic factors can clarify the purpose of the visualization so that your audience understands the sources and methodology of the data presentation.
Don’t: Limit visualization formats and options
Considering your audience’s varying preferences, the complexity of your data, and the formats necessary to provide ample context, your organization must explore a variety of visualization formats to effectively present your data. For example, you may create multiple iterations of data visualizations to present trends over time.
Your organization’s tech stack should provide the tools necessary to create various visualizations, including:
- Charts and graphs: Dissect complex data into charts and graphs that clearly display patterns, outliers, and correlations. Depending on the data being presented, you may use bar charts, histograms, scatter plots, pie charts, or other formats such as 3D models. With such flexibility, your audience can easily compare datasets and draw conclusions.
- Dashboards: Allow your audience to interact with relevant data through customizable views in dashboards. This format allows audience members to filter their views based on the metrics and parameters they’re looking for.
- Infographics: Capture your audience’s attention with visually appealing infographics. This type of visualization enables your organization to tell a story through its data, prioritizing the most important information with organized sections and insights.
Because your data is impacted by various elements, like the type of information and the context surrounding it, versatility is necessary to accurately and effectively present your data. Avoid limiting your formats to provide a comprehensive view to varying audiences.
Beyond presenting data in clear and understandable formats, it’s also your responsibility to offer credible information to those who need it. Always communicate how your data was collected and avoid making assumptions about trends or patterns to demonstrate integrity in your visualizations.
Openly discuss any areas of uncertainty or incomplete data if it applies to your visualizations. A transparent approach to data visualization empowers audience members to unlock meaningful insights.