Conceiving and Reasoning Visualization Design Options - Data Visualization: A Successful Design Process - page 89

As I introduced at the start of this section, getting the right data representation
solution can be hard, particularly in light of all these competing influencing factors.
The best way to enhance your skill on this front is through practice, developing your
experience, and learning from others. Get into a discipline of curating great examples
that you come across in the field and try to discover how others have tackled similar
subjects or maybe even similar dataset "shapes".
The fundamental challenge is being able to handle the temptation (or pressures,
depending on your viewpoint) to focus on achieving aesthetic innovation or novelty.
This is understandable. Many times I hear clients and training delegates expressing
a desire to simply move beyond the bar chart, line chart, and pie chart in order to
create something different.
We are such taste-driven beings; it is simply human nature but sometimes this is
seeking innovation for the sake of it. There is no point pursuing something different
on the flawed basis of just trying to stand out from the crowd or to put more "bums
on seats" if the resulting experience for the reader is one of ultimate frustration. The
disappointment caused by aesthetics that obstruct and obscure the discovery of
insights about the subject matter will outweigh any good will created by an initially
positive impression.
The key is not to set out to achieve an attractive and attention-grabbing work—let
those qualities emerge as a by-product of good design. Focus instead on delivering the
appropriate functional elements by employing the most suitable data representation.
Over time, the more experience you gather as a designer, the more natural these
judgments will become.
The visualization anatomy - data
presentation
The presentation of data involves thinking about pretty much every other
design feature that might be included in our visualization. Here, we are
determining the following:
• The use of color
• The potential of interactive features
• The explanatory annotation
• The architecture and arrangement
The decisions we make about these layers should be focused on delivering
extra meaning, intuitiveness, and depth of insight to our readers or users.