The 5 Biggest Data Visualization Mistakes Everyone Can Easily Avoid
Countless hours of data exploration and analysis can go to waste if you fall at the last obstacle, by failing to communicate your findings effectively.
Unfortunately, data visualization mistakes are very common. Finding the best ways to visualize the data is often considered as an afterthought rather than a critical piece of the process. Poor data visualisations can lead to muddled messages and ultimately, poorly-executed and ineffective decisions.
So here are five key mistakes I see day in and day out. Avoiding these will ensure that your data analysis and reporting efforts will have the desired impact.
As with every aspect of your analytics, having a clear strategy and goal in mind is essential when it comes to planning how you will use visualizations.
With a visualization, the goal will generally be to impart the wisdom gained through data wrangling and exploration to the right people, who are in the right place, at the right time – to use it and make a difference.
This strategizing should take place right at the start, as the first step of putting together a plan for data-driven transformation. Just as you are clear what the goals of your data gathering and analysis are (what do you want to find out?) you start thinking about the formats and methods that will be most effective to present it, visually.
Data storytelling is an essential part of getting your message and meaning across. Like all stories, a data story will have a beginning, a middle and an end. And also like a lot of stories, they won’t necessarily come in that order!
In fact, as a rule, with a data story, it’s often best – essential even – to start at the end. That’s because unlike a movie or novel story, we aren’t worried about giving away the ending. A data-driven story (particularly a business one) should be told more like a newspaper story – shouting your key findings in a headline at the top, and then backing it up with evidence as the reader gets drawn in.
As with a novel, movie or newspaper story, if you don’t build structure around the way it is told, then your audience will come away confused, unsure what (if anything) they are supposed to think, and possibly even with “wrong” ideas based on misinterpretation of your story.
Whatever direction you take your storytelling in, it’s essential to building a solid narrative that you keep intuitive – related facts should follow each other and draw your audience along the paths between evidence and conclusions.
3. Your data visualization tells too many stories
It can be very easy to overdo the amount of information you can cram into your graphs, infographics or dashboards. It’s important to identify the key messages in a data set and present them in a way that isn’t cluttered by extraneous and unnecessary detail.
