Data visualization
Data visualization is the representation of data as charts, graphs, maps and other graphics, so patterns, comparisons and trends can be seen at a glance. Each chart starts from its goal, the point the audience should take away, and its design is tailored to make that point.
How it works
The chart type follows from the question. Bar charts compare categories, line charts show change over time, scatter plots show relationships, maps show geography, and stacked or part-to-whole charts show composition. Design choices rest on visual perception: people judge position and length more accurately than angle, area or color intensity, which is why a bar chart usually beats a pie chart.
Good visualizations label axes and units, start bar axes at zero, remove decoration that carries no data, and highlight the one comparison the reader should notice. In dashboards, consistent colors and layouts across charts let people compare without relearning each one.
A worked example
Satisfaction across 12 regions reaches a restaurant group's executives as a table of 60 numbers. Redrawn as a sorted bar chart with the 2 regions under target in a highlight color, it lets the executives in a review meeting identify the problem regions in under 10 seconds, against more than a minute with the table.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
A chart of survey results gains its annotations from Pulse's themes, a quote beside each bar that explains why that group answered the way it did.