Questions to Ask When Choosing Data Visualizations

Data visualization provides an effective way to communicate your message with your target audience. Visualizations make it easier to interpret data, identify trends and draw conclusions. There are a wide range of data visualizations available including pie charts, line charts and bar graphs. It is important to choose the right type of visualization to represent your data. This will ensure your message has the right impact. It will also ensure that your audience is able to draw the right type of conclusions from the data.

The following are some questions to ask in order to select the right type of data visualization.

1. What message do you want to convey?

Effective presentation of data is really about being able to use it to tell a story. Story telling with data allows you to put metrics into context. The narrative gives the viewer an inside view of the process so they can understand what the data represents and draw a conclusion.

Deciding what story you want to tell is therefore important when selecting visualizations. The right type of visualizations will help you convey the message your message more effectively. Start by identifying your key message e.g. ‘production has increased in the last 3 months’.

2. What type of data will you need to convey your message?

Identify the data that you can use to communicate the message effectively. Are there different sets of data? For example, if you’re representing data on production, there may be data on different types of products produced by your company. You may want to simplify this data by grouping it. For example, you may want to group similar or related products together.

3. What type of data do you have?

The type of data you have and the message you are trying to convey will heavily influence the type of visualization you use. For example, do you have percentages and are trying to show proportions of a whole? Or do you have values and want to show trends over time?

Answering these three questions will help guide your choice of visualizations. Learn more at InetSoft.