Data Authors: Skilled Designers of Data Presentations - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 121

BAD GOOD

Unit Sales by Fruit Unit Sales by Fruit

80 80

60 60

40 40

20 20

Apples Pears Oranges Blue-

berries

Bananas Apples Pears Oranges Blue-

berries

Bananas

Figure 5-33: Separating colors by column adds no value to this chart.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR DATA PRODuCTS

As you get closer to putting pencil on paper to design your data product,
here are a few core design principles to use as reminders of what is important.
By no means should you feel compelled to follow all these principles; in fact,
it is better to pick one or two high-priority principles to help stay focused.

Compactness and Modularity
Some data products become large and unwieldy in an effort to create a single
comprehensive view of an entire business or process. Eric Steven Raymond,
writing about good software design, provides this guidance:

Compactness is the property that a design can fit inside a human being's
head . . . Compact software tools have all the virtues of physical tools that
fit well in the hand. They feel pleasant to use, they don't obtrude themselves
between your mind and your work, [and] they make you more productive. 11

A data presentation should be broken into bite-sized pieces, each built around
a key question, topic, or concept.

Gradual Reveal
Reveal information as the user expresses interest. In other words, don't bom-
bard the user with all the information at once. We frequently use levels of
increasing detail from (a) key metric to (b) context around the metric to (c)