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Posts Tagged ‘Data design’

Data Visualization as Sculpting: Exploratory and Explanatory Approaches

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Image source: Freepik

“If communication is more art than science, then it’s more sculpture than painting. While you’re adding to build your picture in painting, you’re chipping away at sculpting. And when you’re deciding on the insights to use, you’re chipping away everything you have to reveal the core key insights that will best achieve your purpose,” according to Craig Smith, McKinsey & Company’s client communication expert.

The same principle applies in the context of data visualization. Chipping away is important to not overdress data with complicated graphs, special effects, and excess colors. Data presentations with too many elements can confuse and overwhelm the audience. 

Keep in mind that data must convey information. Allow data visualization elements to communicate and not to serve as a decoration. The simpler it is, the more accessible and understandable it is. “Less is more” as long as the visuals still convey the intended message.

Finding the parallel processes of exploratory and explanatory data visualization and the practice of sculpting could help improve how data visualization is done. How can chipping away truly add more clarity to data visualization?

Exploratory Visualization: Adding Lumps of Clay

Exploratory visualization is the phase where you are trying to understand the data yourself before deciding what interesting insights it might hold in its depths. You can hunt and polish these insights in the later stage before presenting them to your audience.

In this stage, you might end up creating maybe a hundred charts. You may create some of them to get a better sense of the statistical description of the data: means, medians, maximum and minimum values, and many more. 

You can also recognize in exploratory if there are any interesting outliers and experience a few things to test relationships between different values. Out of the 100 hypotheses that you visually analyze to figure your way through the data in your hands, you may end up settling on two of them to work on and present to your audience.

In the parallel world of sculpting, artists do a similar thing. They start with an armature-like raw data in designing. Then, they continue to add up lumps of clay on it in exploratory visualizations. 

Artists know for sure that a lot of this clay will end up out of the final sculpture. But they are aware that this accumulation of material is essential because it starts giving them a sense of ideal materialization. Also, adding enough material will ensure that they have plenty to work with when they begin shaping up their work.

In the exploratory stage, approaching data visualization as a form of sculpting may remind us to resist two common and fatal urges:

  • The urge to rush into the explanatory stage – Heading to the chipping away stage too early will lead to flawed results.
  • The urge to show all of what has been done in the exploratory stage to the audience, begrudging all the effort that we have put into it – When you feel that urge, remember that you don’t want to show your audience that big lump of clay; you want to show a beautified result.

Read More: How Data-Ink ratio Imposed Minimalism on Data Visualization

Explanatory Visualization: Chipping Away the Unnecessary

Explanatory visualization is where you settle on the worth-reporting insights. You start polishing the visualizations to do what they are supposed to do, which is explaining or conveying the meaning at a glance. 

The main goal of this stage is to ensure that there are no distractions in your visualization. Also, this stage makes sure that there are no unnecessary lumps of clay that hide the intended meaning or the envisioned shape.

In the explanatory stage, sculptors use various tools. But what they aim for is the same. They first begin furtherly shaping the basic form by taking away large amounts of material. It is to ensure they are on track. Then, they move to finer forming using more precise tools to carve in the shape features and others to add texture. The main question driving this stage for sculptors is, what uncovers the envisioned shape underneath?

In data visualization, you can try taking out each element in your visualization like titles, legends, labels, colors, and so on. Then, ask yourself the same question each time, does the visualization still convey its meaning? 

If yes, keep that element out. If not, try to figure out what is missing and think of less distracting alternatives, if any. For example, do you have multiple categories that you need to name? Try using labels attached to data points instead of separate legends.

There are a lot of things that you can always take away to make your visualization less distracting and more oriented towards your goal. But to make the chipping away stage simpler, C there are five main things to consider according to Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic as cited in her well-known book, Storytelling with Data

  • De-emphasize the chart title; to not drive more attention than it deserves
  • Remove chart border and gridlines
  • Send the x- and y-axis lines and labels to the background (Plus tip from me: Also consider completely taking them out)
  • Remove the variance in colors between the various data points
  • Label the data points directly

In the explanatory stage, approaching data visualization as a form of sculpting may remind us of how vital it is to keep chipping away the unnecessary parts to uncover what’s beneath, that what you intend to convey is not perfectly visible until you shape it up.

Overall, approaching data visualization as a form of sculpting may remind us of the true sole purpose of the practice and crystalize design in the best possible form.

Deepen your understanding of processing and designing data with our insightful articles on data visualization.

Is data visualization a science or a language?

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Image Source: StockSnap | Pixabay

Is data visualization a science or a language?/

That is a question posed by Colin Ware in his book, “Information Visualization.”

We deal with data every day, especially at work. It can fuel our decisions and change the way we work. At the same time, if we’re surrounded by a huge amount of data, we may not find it easy to arrive at an optimal decision. This is where data visualization comes in.

Data visualization refers to the graphical representation of the data. It makes large amounts of information easier to understand and helps identify patterns and trends. People can easily comprehend information and make conclusions through data visualization.

“Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space,” wrote American statistician Edward R. Tuffe, author of the book “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.”

Understanding how to approach data visualization allows people to equip themselves with the right tools, approach, and strategies as they gather data and present them visually. This is important to businesses who want to understand consumer behavior patterns or governments seeking data-backed insights on a crisis.

Data visualization may be considered a science because it is a process and represents data methodically and accurately. Data visualization begins with volumes of information, undergoes an intensive cleaning, classification, statistical and mathematical modeling, analysis, and design process, and ends with a visualization. 

On the other hand, many argue that data visualization is a language because it uses diagrams to convey meaning. Data is encoded into symbology and semiology. The syntax and conventions of these diagrams are not inherent and must be learned. 

Data visualization helps to communicate analytics results in pictures. In simple words, data visualization is the language of images. That is on par with the language of words both written and spoken and with the language of numbers and statistics.

Merging science and language

Science and language do not have to invalidate each other. Their elements can go hand in hand in data visualization. 

In data visualization, the challenge is how to make more people take interest in scientifically processed data. Presenting appropriate and relevant information in an engaging format through design is what makes data visualization successful. Science processes and provides information based on certain objectives while design is a form of communication shaped by visual elements.

Combined, scientific data and design can generate meaning out of raw data. The end result of data visualization is almost always a story. In storytelling, the plot (design) won’t be able to progress without the characters (scientific data) and vice versa. 

Ensuring that graphs and charts present meaningful results is important now more than ever. In MicroStrategy’s “2018 Global State of Enterprise Analytics,” 63% of data-driven organizations said that implementing analytics initiatives led to high efficiency and productivity while 57% said they became more effective in decision making.

With this, the challenge for organizations is to know how to structure, format, and present their graphical data that will allow them to make faster business decisions. Sign up for The KPI Institute’s Certified Data Visualization Professional course to learn the fundamentals of creating visual representations, the most effective layouts, channel selection, and reporting best practices.

Consultant Interview: Francesco Consolati

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FrancescoIn 2017, the Performance Magazine editorial team interviewed Francesco Consolati, Advisory Business Solution Manager – Risk, Fraud and Performance Management at SAS – Italy. His thoughts and views on Performance Management are detailed below.

”In my opinion, the integration of analytics in the daily activities of any organization boasting a Performance Management System should be a high priority objective.”

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