Data Visualization

Visualizations that really work - HBR

The two questions:

• Is the information conceptual (idea, simplification, teaching) or data-driven (statistics, informing, enlightening)?
• Am I declaring something (documenting, designing, affirming) or exploring something (prototyping, iterating, interacting, automating, confirming, discovering)?

|-----------Declarative------------|
|                |                 |
|    Idea        |     Everyday    |
| Illustration   |     Dataviz     |
|                |                 |
|                |                 |
Conceptual-------|-------Data-Driven
|                |                 |
|                |                 |
|    Idea        |    Visual       |
| Generation     |   Discovery     |
|                |                 |
|                |                 |
|-----------Exploratory------------|

Idea Illustration

Showing processes or frameworks

• Keep the illustrations very simple

Idea Generation

Tracking undefined or complex things. Loose whiteboarding. Helps facilitate group discussions.

Visual Discovery

For big data, complex, or dynamic things.

• Is what I suspect actually true?
• What are some other ways of depicting this idea? (I may not know what I'm looking for yet)

Everyday Dataviz

For simple, low-volume data. Line charts, bar charts, pies, and scatterplots.

• Communicate a single idea

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• Busy charts only communicate that the person who made them was busy.