Communication

Goals

• Review principles for creating visuals for effective communication
• Understand the expectations for orally presenting visualizations

Additional Resources

For more information about the topics covered in this chapter, refer to the resources below:

• Effective visuals for Decision Making by Posit

Effective Communication

Effective Communication = Effective Visuals + Clear Narrative

Effective Visuals

When creating a visualization, consider the following principles covered in the Effective Viz lesson:

• Professionalism
  • meaningful axis labels
  • figure caption
• Accessibility
  • alternative text
  • color blind friendly colors
• Design details
  • consider glyph choice
• consider color choices
• facilitate comparison
• use contrasts to draw attention
• Ethics
• Don’t mislead
• Consider visibility, privacy, power, emotion & embodiment, pluralism, context

Exercise

Consider some visuals from WTF Visualizations or Bad Graphs Trello Board then think about

• What is effective?
• What could be improved?

Clear Narrative

When narrating a visualization, consider the following recommendations:

Motivation & Context

• What is the question you are answering, and why is it important?
• What data context does the audience need to understand the visual? (W’s?)

Orientation

• What aspects of the visual should you explain to provide necessary orientation?
• Walk through guides (axes, color legend, etc.)

Highlights

• Hone in on one or two interesting data points and tell the story behind them.
• Explain how the visual aspects of the viz reflect that story (this reinforces how they should interpret the viz).

Big Picture

• What are the overall trends or takeaways?
• What are the implications for them? Why does it matter?
• What comparison are you wanting to highlight?

Oral Presentation

• Speak slowly, it takes people some time to wrap their heads around a new viz.
• Practice ahead of time with a friend, by yourself and refine the viz, if necessary.