- Use Good Data: Data quality is the first principle. Good data should be accurate, concise, and valuable. Use the data that is meaningful and targeted to the reader rather than some common knowledge that everyone knows.
- Tell a story: Make your visualizations as a logical story. Although graphs, charts, tables are helpful and attractive, they are not all of your presentation, but proper complement to boost your message and idea.
- Choose right visualization and keep it simple: Some graphs could be very creative, colorful, fancy, but make sure you choose the proper and right visualization and keep it as simple as you can. Because the goal of visualization is to display your data accurately and easy to understand.
- Label the data: Give as much description and information to your figures, statistics, etc, so that the data is more easy to comprehend. For instance, a title tells what you are going to interpret; an aix on the graph tells how the data is measured.
- Organization is the key: Good organization helps readers digest the information you want to convey. The organization of graphs and charts includes using the solid line or non solid lines, misrepresenting data, obscuring your data, etc.
- Be open to unexpected insights: Schedule a little bit more time in your iteration for dealing with unexpected insights. When a new insight is uncovered, try to think about the impact. Sometimes, an insight looks like not directly relative to the topic, but you’ll find it delivers business value in the end.
Reference:
- https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/five-principles-effective-data-visualizations
- http://www.copypress.com/blog/9-tips-for-making-your-data-visualization-more-effective/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/data-visualization-mistakes#sm.0001sa9p6lkrrcpjval18kj8srjdb