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August 5, 2020
White space can be used strategically to draw attention to the parts of the page that are not white space.
Beyond these guidelines, think about how you can use white space strategically for emphasis, as was illustrated with the dramatic pause earlier. If there is one thing that is really important, think about making that the only thing on the page.
want to understand how your customers feel about various dimensions of their shopping experience in your store compared to your competitors. You have conducted a survey to collect this information and are now trying to understand what it tells you.
Decluttering: step-by-step
how the process of identifying and removing clutter improves our visual and the clarity of the story that we’re ultimately trying to tell.
rumbling of complaints
We can also abbreviate the months of the year so that they will fit horizontally on the x-axis,
cognitive load
Dữ liệu nhận thức
The Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
preattentive attributes. We will explore how preattentive attributes like size, color, and position on page can be used strategically in two ways. First, preattentive attributes can be leveraged to help direct your audience’s attention to where you want them to focus it.
Second, they can be used to create a visual hierarchy of elements to lead your audience through the information you want to communicate in the way you want them to process it.
one solution is to label the various data series directly (reducing that work of going back and forth between the legend and the data by leveraging the Gestalt principle of proximity that we covered in Chapter 3).
we use preattentive attributes strategically, they can help us enable our audience to see what we want them to see before they even know they’re seeing it!
visual hierarchy
Phân cấp trực quang
Studies have shown that we have about
during which time they decide whether to continue to look at what we’ve put in front of them or direct their attention to something else.
Highlighting one aspect can make other things harder to see One word of warning in using preattentive attributes: when you highlight one point in your story, it can actually make other points harder to see. When you’re doing exploratory analysis, you should mostly avoid the use of preattentive attributes for this reason. When it comes to explanatory analysis, however, you should have a specific story you are communicating to your audience. Leverage preattentive attributes to help make that story visually clear.
the
don’t let your design choices be happenstance; rather, they should be the result of explicit decisions.
For color to be effective, it must be used sparingly.
Do bao hoa
Where are your eyes drawn? There is an easy test for determining whether preattentive attributes are being used effectively. Create your visual, then close your eyes or look away for a moment and then look back at it, taking note of where your eyes are drawn first. Do they immediately land where you want your audience to focus? Better yet, seek the help of a friend or colleague—ask them to talk you through how they process the visual: where their eyes go first, where they go next, and so on. This is a great way
to see things through your audience’s eyes and confirm whether the visual you’ve created is drawing attention and creating a visual hierarchy of information in the way that you desire.
the sake of novelty.
red to denote the double-digit loss you want to draw attention to or green to highlight significant growth.
In a data visualization, think about which data you want your audience
to see first and whether rearranging the visual accordingly makes sense (it won’t always, but this is one tool you have at your disposal for signaling importance to your audience).
Preattentive attributes are powerful tools when used sparingly and strategically in visual communication. Without other cues, our audience is left to process all of the information we put in front of them. Ease this by leveraging preattentive attributes like size, color, and position on page to signal what’s important. Use these strategic attributes to draw attention to where you want your audience to look and create visual hierarchy that helps guide your audience through the visual in the way you want. Evaluate the effectiveness of preattentive attributes in your visual by applying the “where
...more
focus your audience’s attention where you want them to pay it.
We will explore affordances, accessibility, and aesthetics, drawing on a number of concepts introduced previously,
but looking at them through a slightly different lens. We will also discuss strategies for gaining audience acceptance of your visual designs.
Context is what needs to be present for your audience in order for what you want to communicate to make sense.
When it comes to context, use the right amount—not too much, not too little.
In either case, the thoughtful and clear visual hierarchy establishes order for the
in a complex visual without it feeling, well, complicated. For our audience, by highlighting the important stuff, eliminating distractions, and establishing a visual hierarchy, the data visualizations we create afford understanding.
We’ll discuss two specific strategies related to accessibility in communicating with data: (1) don’t overcomplicate and (2) text is your friend.
Here are some additional tips to keep your visuals and communications from appearing overly complicated: Make it legible: use a consistent, easy-to-read font (consider both typeface and size). Keep it clean: make your data visualization approachable by leveraging visual affordances. Use straightforward language: choose simple language over complex, choose
fewer words over more words, define any specialized language with which your audience may not be familiar, and spell out acronyms (at minimum, the first time you use them or in a footnote). Remove unnecessary complexity: when making a choice between simple and complicated, favor simple.
There are a few types of text that absolutely must be present. Assume that every chart needs a title and every axis needs a title (exceptions to this rule will be extremely rare). The absence of these titles—no matter how clear you think it may be from context—causes your audience to stop and question what they are looking at. Instead, label explicitly so they can use their brainpower to understand the information, rather than spend it trying to figure out how to read the visual.
Don’t assume that two different people looking at the same data visualization will draw the same conclusion. If there is a conclusion you want your audience to reach, state it in words.
The title bar at the top of your PowerPoint slide is precious real estate: use it wisely! This is the first thing your audience encounters on the page or screen and yet so often it gets used for redundant descriptive titles (for example, “2015 Budget”). Instead use this space for an action title.
Note how a few choice words and phrases make this data so much more quickly accessible than it otherwise would be.
your eyes
I often see forecast and actual data plotted together as a single line, without any distinguishing aspects to set the forecast numbers apart from the rest. This is a mistake.
I hit
sound! It is a happy ending
conventional rhetoric.
telling a compelling story is harder than conventional rhetoric.
Don’t communicate for yourself—communicate for your audience. The story is not for you; the story is for them. Now that we’ve learned some lessons from the masters, let’s consider how we can construct our stories.
The specific content will take different forms depending on your situation. The following are some ideas for content that might make sense to include as you build out your story and convince your audience to buy in: Further develop the situation or problem by covering relevant background. Incorporate external context or comparison points. Give examples that illustrate the issue. Include data that demonstrates the problem.
