Designing for an Audience - Data Points: Visualization That Means Something - page 605

When you have your story, instead of just arranging graphics in a way that looks
good, talk about the data in a way that fits with the context of the report. For
example, you can take readers through your analysis, from big picture down
to details and notable data points, or you can go the other way, from case
study to overall summary.

Note: In Chapter 1, you first went from single
observation to an overview with the wedding
photos, and later in the chapter, you went from
the overview to more specific with crashes in
the United States.

If the work is more like a reference than a story, you can
split up the data into groups or categories. Maybe you have
country-specific data. Categorize by region or development
level, or you might just want to show the profile of each
country arranged in alphabetical order.

Again, it is all about how you think your audience will read your graphics,
coupled with how you want your audience to read them.

The same goes for charts embedded within text, such as with reports or articles.
Create continuity between your visualization and words. Often people make a
hodge-podge of graphs, with little thought to how they relate, and crudely stitch
them together. You end up with separate modules that you look at individually,
but you usually want to read the series of graphs like you would an article.

Sometimes continuity is as simple as paying attention to where a graphic is
placed within a body of text. For example, Figure 6-20 shows a generic layout for
a report where graphics are placed in areas that are convenient space-wise, but
references to the graphics within the text are on different pages. This requires
that a reader flip forward in the report to see a figure after reading about it
on the previous page or to go backward to reread the figure's explanation.

In this case, it's useful to design the figure so that it's self-encapsulated. Readers
can then glean information directly from a chart rather than referring to a
previous page for what it means.

This makes sense if you think about how people might read your report. Do
they read the report from front to back, or do they scan the report first, looking
at headers and figures, and then look closer if something seems interesting?
Self-encapsulated charts make it easier for the scanning reader.

Note: Flipping a page to read about a figure
might not seem like much, but it can grow to be
a bigger burden with longer reports and more
figures.

On the other hand, your paper might use a one-column lay-
out, as shown in Figure 6-21. This layout is common online.
It's easier to place figures within the flow of the text, rather
than off to the side or on a separate page, so it might make
more sense to explain in the body text rather than within
the figure. This might provide a better flow to the report and
make it more readable as a whole, whereas heavy annotation
in the figure might actually break continuity.