Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Visualization skills for the masses
The following is a quote from Stephen Few from his topic
Show Me the Numbers
:
"The skills required for most effectively displaying information are not intuitive
and rely largely on principles that must be learned."
More and more of us are becoming responsible for the analysis, presentation, and
interpretation of data. This naturally reflects the explosion in access to data and the
value attributed to potential insights that are contained.
As I've already stated, where once this was typically a specialist role, nowadays the
responsibility for dealing with data has crept into most professional duties. This has
been accelerated by the ubiquitous availability of a range of accessible productivity
tools to handle and analyze data.
This means visualization has become both a problem and an opportunity for the
masses, which makes the importance and dissemination of effective practice a
key imperative.
The quote from Stephen Few will resonate with many of you reading this. If you
were to ask yourself "Why do I design visualizations in the way I do?", what would
be your answer? Think about any chart or graphic you produce to communicate
information to others. How do you design it? What factors do you take into account?
Perhaps your response would fall in to one or more of the following:
• You have a certain design style based on personal taste
• You just play around until something emerges that you instinctively like
the look of
• You trust software defaults and don't go beyond that in terms of modifying
the design
• You have limited software capabilities, so you don't know how to modify
a design
• You just do as the boss tells you—"can you do me some fancy charts?"
For many people, the idea of a conscious data visualization design technique is
quite new. The absence of any formal coaching, at almost any level of education,
in the techniques of visualization means until you become aware of the subject,
you have probably never even thought about your visualization design approach.
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