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story telling - Coggle Diagram

- - - - rarely a good idea.
        
        As your audience reads it, you lose their ears and attention to make your point verbally.
    - - Don’t let heavy borders or shading compete for attention
      - using light/ minimal borders or simply white space
      - Borders should be used to improve the legibility of your table
        
        making them grey, or getting rid of them altogether. The data should be what stands out, not the borders.
  - - - the higher saturation of blue, the higher the number.
  - - - points
        
        Scatterplot
        
        showing the relationship between two things
        
        used in scientific fields
      - lines
        
        to plot continuous data.
        
        some unit of time: days, months, quarters, or years.
        
        the standard line graph
        
        show a single series of data, two series of data, or multiple series
        
        Be consistent in the time points you plot.
        
        In some cases, may represent a summary statistic, like the average, or the point estimate of a forecast
        
        the slopegraph.
        
        Slopegraphs can be useful when you have two time periods or points of comparison and want to quickly show relative increases and decreases or differences across various categories between the two data points.
        
        the lines that connect them give you the visual increase or decrease in rate of change
        
        If many of the lines are overlapping, a slopegraph may not work, though in some cases you can still emphasize a single series at a time with success
      - bars
        
        plotting categorical data, where information is organized into groups.
        
        easy to see quickly which category is the biggest, which is the smallest, and also the incremental difference between categories
        
        bar charts always have a zero baseline (where the x‐axis crosses the y‐axis at zero), otherwise you get a false visual comparison. this rule does not apply to line graphs, but be caution to use
        
        The y‐axis labels -> moved to the left
        -> we see how to interpret the data before we get to the actual data
        
        The data labels -> were pulled inside to reduce clutter
        -> I might omit the y‐axis entirely and show only the data labels within the bars to reduce redundant information
        
        If you want your audience to focus on big‐picture trends, think about preserving the axis but deemphasizing it by making it grey.
        If the specific numerical values are important, it may be better to label the data points directly
        
        the width of bars: the bars should be wider than the white space between the bars.
        
        types of bars
        
        Vertical bar chart
        
        single series, two series, or multiple series
        
        Consider what you want your audience to be able to compare, and structure your categorization hierarchy to make that as easy as possible.
        
        as you add more series of data, it becomes more difficult to focus on one at a time and pull out insight, so use multiple series bar charts with caution
        
        Stacked vertical bar chart
        
        allow you to compare totals across categories and also see the subcomponent pieces within a given category.
        
        visually overwhelming
        
        It is hard to compare the subcomponents across the various categories once you get beyond the bottom series
        
        you no longer have a consistent baseline to use to compare.
        
        be structured as absolute numbers (where you plot the numbers directly)
        or with each column summing to 100% (where you plot the percent of total for each vertical segment)
        
        When you use the 100% stacked bar, think about whether it makes sense to also include the absolute numbers for each category total (either in an unobtrusive way in the graph directly, or possibly in a footnote), which may aid in the interpretation of the data.
        
        Waterfall chart
        
        used to pull apart the pieces of a stacked bar chart to focus on one at a time, or to show a starting point, increases and decreases, and the resulting ending point.
        
        The secret is to leverage the stacked bar chart and make the rst series (the one that appears closest to the x‐axis) invisible.
        
        how to set one up for your own purposes can be downloaded at storytellingwithdata.com/ waterfall-chart.
        
        Horizontal bar chart
        
        especially useful if your category names are long
        making your graph legible
        
        single series, two series, or multiple series
        
        be thoughtful about how your categories are ordered.
        
        age groups: keep the categories in numerical order
        
        think about what ordering of your data will make the most sense
        
        If the biggest category is the most important, think about putting that first and ordering the rest of the categories in decreasing numerical order. Or if the smallest is most important, put that at the top and order by ascending data values.
        
        Stacked horizontal bar chart
        
        show the totals across different categories but also give a sense of the subcomponent pieces. They can be structured to show either absolute values or sum to 100%.
        
        work well for visualizing portions of a whole on a scale from negative to positive
        because you get a consistent baseline on both the far left and the far right, allowing for easy comparison of the left‐most pieces as well as the right‐most pieces.
      - area
        
        harder to read
        
        when I need to visualize numbers of vastly different magnitudes
  - - - we are asking our audience to compare angles and areas. -> pie charts are hard for people to read.
      - One approach is to replace the pie chart with a horizontal bar chart
      - If you find yourself using a pie chart, pause and ask yourself: why?
        
        If you’re able to answer this question, you’ve probably put enough thought into it to use the pie chart, but it certainly shouldn’t be the rst type of graph that you reach for
    - - With a donut chart, we are asking our audience to compare one arc length to another arc length
        
        How confident do you feel in your eyes’ ability to ascribe quantitative value to an arc length?
    - - it skews the visual perception of the numbers.
      - The only exception is if you are actually plotting a third dimension
    - - Don’t show the secondy‐axis. Instead, label the data points that belong on this axis directly.
      - Pull the graphs apart vertically and have a separate y‐axis for each (both along the left) but leverage the same x‐axis across both.
- - - - we run the risk of our audience deciding they don’t want to take the time to understand what we’re showing
        
        Lack of visual order
        
        Alignment
        
        I tend to avoid center‐aligned text for the reason that does not create clean lines either on the left or on the right, which can make even a thoughtful layout appear sloppy
        
        When you have everything lined up exactly like you want it, remove the table or make the table’s borders invisible
        
        your audience will typically start at the top left of the page or screen and will move their eyes in a “z” shape
        
        to upper‐left‐most justify the text (title, axis titles, legend)
        
        This means the audience will hit the details that tell them how to read the table or graph before they get to the data itself.
        
        diagonal components.
        
        diagonal elements such as lines and text should be avoided
        
        They look messy and, in the case of text, are harder to read than their horizontal counterparts
        
        White space
        
        White space in visual communication is as important as pauses in public speaking
        
        only add data with a thoughtful and specific purpose in mind!
        
        White space can be used strategically to draw attention to the parts of the page that are not white space.
        
        Margins should remain free of text and visuals
        
        think about making that the only thing on the page
        
        Non‐strategic use of contrast
        
        Clear contrast can be a signal to our audience, helping them understand where to focus their attention.
        
        if there is something really important we want our audience to know or see, we should make that the one thing that is very different from the rest.
        
        The lack of clear contrast, on the other hand, can be a form of visual clutter.
        
        Books: Colin Ware, Information Visualization: Perception for Design, 2004
      - When design is thoughtful, it fades into the background so that your audience doesn’t even notice it
        
        Decluttering: step‐by‐step
        This visual is not yet complete
        
        Remove chart border
        
        Remove gridlines
        
        this allows for greater contrast, and your data will stand out more.
        
        Remove data markers
        
        use them on purpose
        
        Clean up axis labels
        
        abbreviate the months of the year
        
        eliminating the diagonal text.
        
        Label data directly
        
        leverage the Gestalt principle of proximity and put the data labels right next to the data they describe.
        
        Leverage consistent color
        
        make the data labels the same color as the data they describe
        “these two pieces of information are related.”
  - - - You see columns and rows, simply due to dot spacing
        
        We can leverage this way that people see in table design
    - - Objects that are of similar color, shape, size, or orientation are perceived as related or belonging to part of a group
      - This can be leveraged in tables to help draw our audience’s eyes in the direction we want them to focus.
        Ex: the similarity of color is a cue for our eyes to read across the rows
        
        This eliminates the need for additional elements such as borders to help direct our attention.
    - - We think of objects that are physically enclosed together as belong- ing to part of a group.
      - draw a visual distinction within our data
    - - The closure concept says that people like things to be simple and to fit in the constructs that are already in our heads
        => Because of this, people tend to perceive a set of individual elements as a single
      - when we take away those unnecessary elements, our data stands out more
    - - when looking at objects, our eyes seek the smoothest path and naturally create continuity in what we see even where it may not explicitly exist
      - stripping away unnecessary elements allows our data to stand out more.
    - - We tend to think of objects that are physically connected as part of a group.
      - One way that we frequently leverage the connection principle is in line graphs, to help our eyes see order in the data
- - - - Who
        
        Your audience
        
        specific
        
        Avoid general
        
        narrowed your target audience
        
        You
        
        think about the relationship that you have with your audience and how you expect that they will perceive you
        
        Will you be encountering each other for the first time through this communication, or do you have an established relationship?
        
        Do they already trust you as an expert, or do you need to work to establish credibility?
      - what
        
        Action
        
        What do you need your audience to know or do?
        
        The 3‐minute story & Big Idea
        
        what the most important pieces are as well as what isn’t essential
        
        3‐minute story
        
        1 more item...
        
        Big Idea
        
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        why they should care about what you say
        
        Mechanism
        
        How will you communicate to your audience?
        
        live presentation
        
        you (the presenter) are in full control.
        
        sparse slides
        
        a written document or email
        
        you (the creator of the document or email) have less control
        
        The level of detail is typically higher
        
        the document will need to directly address more of the potential questions.
        
        slideument
        
        The idea is that you can use a single slide deck both for slides during your presentation and as a handout for people to read afterwards.
        
        Storyboarding
        
        establishes a structure for your communication
        
        don’t start with presentation software
        
        Use a whiteboard, Post‐it notes, or plain paper
        
        using Post‐it notes -> you can rearrange (and add and remove)
        
        Tone
        
        What tone do you want your communication to set?
        
        Are you celebrating a success?
        
        Is the topic lighthearted or serious?
        
        Trying to light a re to drive action?
      - How
        
        What data is available that will help make my point?
- - - - preattentive attributes
        (size, color, and position)
        
        help direct your audience’s attention
        
        How people see
        
        a stimulus -> gets captured by our eyes -> some processing of brain
        
        By understanding how our audience sees and processes information, we put ourselves in a better position to be able to communicate effectively.
        
        A brief lesson on memory
        
        iconic memory
        
        super fast
        
        Information stays in your iconic memory for a fraction of a second before it gets forwarded on to your short‐term memory.
        
        they can be leveraged for effective visual communication today.
        
        it is tuned to a set of preattentive attributes
        
        short‐term memory
        
        has limitations
        
        people can keep about four chunks of visual information in their short‐term memory at a given time.
        
        long‐term memory.
        
        When something leaves short‐term memory, it either goes into oblivion and is likely lost forever, or is passed into long‐term memory.
        
        Long‐ term memory is the aggregate of visual and verbal memory
        
        Verbal memory is accessed by a neural net, where the path becomes important for being able to recognize or recall.
        
        Visual memory, on the other hand, functions with specialized structures
        
        1 more item...
        
        Color
        
        leverage color selectively as a strategic tool to highlight the important parts of your visual
        
        base color is grey, not black, to allow for greater contrast since color stands out more against grey than black
        
        I often use blue for a number of reasons: (1) I like it, (2) you avoid issues of colorblindness that we’ll discuss momentarily, and (3) it prints well in black‐and‐white
        
        use it sparingly, use it consistently, design with the color- blind in mind, be thoughtful of the tone color conveys, and consider whether to leverage brand colors
        
        use it sparingly
        
        The power of the preattentive attributes was lost: everything was different, which meant that nothing stood out
        
        1 more item...
        
        sufficient contrast
        
        Use color consistently
        
        use whatever will be easiest for your audience to read
        
        keeping the same layout as you essentially train your audience how to read the information, making the interpretation of later graphs all the easier and reducing mental fatigue.
        
        However, if you want to signal a clear change in topic or tone, a shift in color is one way to visually reinforce this.
        
        Design with colorblind in mind
        
        you should avoid using shades of red and shades of green together
        
        1 more item...
        
        I frequently use blue to signal positive and orange for negative
        
        see what your visual looks like through colorblind eyes
        
        3 more items...
        
        Be thoughtful of tone that color conveys
        
        Color evokes emotion. Consider the tone you want to set with your data visualization or broader communication and choose a color (or colors) that help reinforce the emotion you want to arouse from your audience.
        
        Is the topic serious or lighthearted? Are you making a striking bold statement and want your colors to echo it, or is a more circumspect approach with a muted color‐scheme appropriate?
        
        Brand colors: to leverage or not to leverage?
        
        identify one or maybe two brand‐appropriate colors to use as your “audience‐look‐here” cues and keep the rest of your color palette relatively muted with shades of grey or black.
        
        In some cases, it may make sense to deviate from brand colors entirely.
        
        1 more item...
        
        create a visual hierarchy of elements to lead your audience
        
        Preattentive attributes signal where to look
        
        your eye is drawn to the one element within each group that is different from the rest
        
        which of the attributes can be used to encode quantitative information (line length, spatial position, or to a more limited extent, line width, size, and intensity can be used to reflect relative value), and which should be used as categorical differentiators.
        
        help us enable our audience to see what we want them to see before they even know they’re seeing it!
        
        Preattentive attributes in text
        
        color and size are attention grabbing, whereas italics achieve a milder emphasis
        
        Color
        Size
        Outline (enclosure)
        Bold
        Italics
        Separate spatially
        Underline (added marks)
        
        This makes the information we present more easily scannable.
        
        We can signal what is most important that they should pay attention to rst, what is second most important that they should pay attention to next, and so on.
        
        there are variances within a given preattentive attribute that will draw attention with more or less strength.
        
        For example, with the preattentive attribute of color, a bright blue will typically draw attention more than a muted blue. Both will draw more attention than a light grey.
        
        Preattentive attributes in graphs
        
        When it comes to explanatory analysis and leveraging this visual to share information with your audience (rather than just showing data), thoughtful use of color and text is one way we can focus the story,
        
        In the process of determining where I want to focus my audience’s attention, first, pushing everything to the background
        Next, I want to make the data stand out.
        We’re strategic about which data markers and labels we preserve and which we eliminate.
        
        Size
        
        If you’re show- ing multiple things that are of roughly equal importance, size them similarly. Alternatively, if there is one really important thing, leverage size to indicate that: make it BIG!
        
        don’t let your design choices be happenstance; rather, they should be the result of explicit decisions.
        
        Position on page
        
        start at the top left of your visual or slide and scan with their eyes in zig- zag motions across the screen or page
        
        If something is important, try not to make your audience wade through other stuff to get to it
        
        think about which data you want your audience to see first and whether rearranging the visual accordingly makes sense
        
        when you highlight one point in your story, it can actually make other points harder to see. When you’re doing
        exploratory analysis, you should mostly avoid the use of preattentive attributes for this reason
- - - - These are aspects inherent to the design that make it obvious how the product is to be used.
        For example, a knob affords turning, a button affords pushing, and a cord affords pulling
      - When sufficient affordances are present, good design fades into the background and you don’t even notice it.
        
        highlight the important stuff
        
        In Universal Principles of Design (Lidwell, Holden, and Butler, 2003), it is recommended that at most 10% of the visual design be highlighted
        
        Bold, italics, and underlining
        
        Use for titles, labels, captions, and short word sequences to differentiate elements
        
        Bolding is generally preferred over italics and underlining
        
        it adds minimal noise to the design while clearly highlighting chosen elements
        
        Italics add minimal noise, but also don’t stand out as much and are less legible
        
        Underlining adds noise and compromises legibility, so should be used sparingly
        
        CASE and typeface
        
        Uppercase text in short word sequences is easily scanned
        
        applied to titles, labels, and keywords
        
        Avoid using different fonts as a highlighting technique
        
        Color
        
        generally in concert with other highlighting techniques (for example, bold).
        
        an effective highlighting technique
        
        Inversing elements
        
        effective at attracting attention
        
        add considerable noise
        
        Size
        
        attract attention and signal importance.
        
        blinking or flashing
        
        use only to indicate highly critical information that requires immediate response
        
        I do not recommend when communicating with data for explanatory purposes
        
        eliminate distractions
        
        “You know you’ve achieved perfection, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing to take away”
        
        When it comes to the perfection of design with data visualization, the decision of what to cut or de‐emphasize can be even more important than what to include or highlight.
        
        To identify distractions, think about both clutter and context.
        
        clutter
        
        these are elements that take up space but don’t add information to our visuals
        
        Context
        
        Context is what needs to be present for your audience in order for what you want to communicate to make sense.
        
        use the right amount—not too much, not too little
        
        Consider broadly what information is critical and what is not.
        
        Identify unnecessary, extraneous, or irrelevant items or information.
        
        Determine whether there are things that might be distracting from your main message or point
        
        identify potential distractions
        
        Not all data are equally important
        
        When detail isn’t needed, summarize
        
        Ask yourself: would eliminating this change anything?
        
        if they don’t support the message, they don’t serve the purpose of communication.
        
        Push necessary, but non‐message‐impacting items to the back- ground
        
        In cases where you are unsure whether you’ll need the detail that you’re considering cutting, think about whether there is a way to include it without diluting your main message
        
        create a clear hierarchy of information.
        
        pull some items to the forefront and push other elements to the background
        
        The size and color of font and data points alert us where to pay attention and in what general order.
        
        the thoughtful and clear visual hierarchy establishes order for the audience to use to process the information in a complex visual without it feeling, well, complicated
    - - designs should be usable by people of diverse abilities / widely varying technical skills
      - Well-designed data visualization is easy to interpret and understand
      - two specific strategies
        
        don’t overcomplicate
        
        “If it’s hard to read, it’s hard to do.”
        
        the fussier the font, the more difficult the students judged the routine and the less likely they were to undertake it.
        
        the more complicated it looks, the more time your audience perceives it will take to understand and the less likely they are to spend time to understand it.
        
        tips
        
        Make it legible: use a consistent, easy‐to‐read font (consider both typeface and size).
        
        Keep it clean: make your data visualization approachable by leveraging visual affordances.
        
        Use straightforward language: simple language, fewer words, define any specialized language, spell out acronyms (viết tắt)
        
        Remove unnecessary complexity: favor simple.
        
        text is your friend
        
        Text plays a number of roles in communicating with data: use it to label, introduce, explain, reinforce, highlight, recommend, and tell a story.
        
        label explicitly so they can use their brainpower to understand the informa-tion, rather than spend it trying to figure out how to read the visual.
        
        If there is a conclusion you want your audience to reach, state it in words. Leverage preattentive attributes to make those important words stand out.
        
        Action titles on slides
        
        to annotate important or interesting points directly on a graph.
        
        explain nuances in the data, highlight something to pay attention to, or describe relevant external factors.
        
        graph title, axis titles, and a footnote with the data source
    - - People perceive more aesthetic designs as easier to use than less aesthetic designs
        
        Be smart with color
        
        use color sparingly and strategically to highlight the important parts of your visual.
        
        Pay attention to alignment
        
        create clean vertical and horizontal lines
        
        Leverage white space
        
        Preserve margins
        
        don’t stretch your graphics to ll the space, or add things simply because you have extra space.
      - spending time to make our designs aesthetically pleasing can mean our audience will have more patience with our visuals, increasing our chance of success for getting our message across.
      - When you see a graph that looks nice, pause to consider what you like about it
        
        save it and build a collection of inspiring visuals. Mimic aspects from effective designs to create your own.
    - - But what should you do when your audience isn’t accepting of your design?
      - For a design to be effective, it must be accepted by its intended audience
      - leverage for gaining acceptance
        
        Articulate the benefits of the new or different approach
        
        Show the side‐by‐side. If the new approach is clearly superior to the old, showing them side‐by‐side will demonstrate this
        
        Provide multiple options and get feedback to determine
        which design will best meet the given needs.
        
        Identify influential members of your audience and talk to them one‐on‐one in an effort to gain acceptance of your design
        
        What do they like? What questions do they have? Which visual do they prefer and why?