Data Authors: Skilled Designers of Data Presentations - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 111

Wrapping Data in Context
Context is the frame you put around your data to make it understandable to
your audience. Context gives data meaning. Take the number 73, for example.
This is a number, like many numbers, that means little by itself. Giving it a unit of
measurement helps, such as 73 home runs . Here's a little more context: 73 is the
record number of home runs hit in Major League Baseball in a season held by Barry
Bonds. And if you are a baseball fan, the number means even more (or perhaps
less) when put in the context of the steroid scandals of Bonds' era. By wrapping
the number in the relevant information, it becomes meaningful and useful.

As an author of data products, you have many choices about context to help
explain your data. The simplest place to start is with labeling. Any chart, data
point, or visualization needs basic labeling to ensure the audience knows
what it is looking at: title, axes, units of measurement, and source. Similarly,
the scope of the data is critical baseline information. For example, does the
key metric represent the last month or the last day of data?

These basics ensure the reader knows what you are showing. The data becomes
more intriguing when values can be compared. Consider the following types
of context to start to reveal insights:

Benchmarks —Is there an industry value or average that reveals how
your organization compares to others? Keep in mind that the most
useful benchmarks are those that your readers consider “comparables”
relative to factors such as size, industry, or region.

⬛

Goals —Comparing a value to a goal goes a long way toward showing
the audience how it might feel about the data it sees.

⬛

Changes —How has a value changed over time? It is often more useful
to consider data trends in values than the values themselves.

⬛

The key metrics shown in Figure 5-22 are a good example of providing con-
text around some basic metrics. The values are surrounded by an indicator of
change and shown relative to a quarterly goal and the quarter-to-date goal.
The user of this dashboard is given much more than some key metrics; she can
see whether those numbers are good or bad as compared to expectations.

Sales Revenue

Quarter
goal
QTD
goal

60k Quarter

goal
QTD
goal

$400k

12.1 k
-11%

$ 222 k
+33%

Figure 5-22: Key metrics shown with relevant context