Esther Roughsedge & Vicky Avila BSPS conference 2017 Interactive visualisations Infographics and

Focussing on practical advice & tips! What will we cover? How to bring data to life using infographics and interactive visualisations The basics – good practice when presenting data in charts Infographics Interactive data visualisations Twitter Focussing on practical advice & tips! This isn’t a hands-on workshop with computers, but we will have interactive bits. Do ask questions and share your own ideas, as we go along. Disclaimer: Options vary and there is lots of subjectivity involved!

Disclaimers… A lot of this advice is subjective. There are lots of ways of doing something. Share your own views / tips / experiences / questions! Some of these examples are our own, and some come from other people.

Why do this? We should maximise their impact by: We have lots of information and data We should maximise their impact by: reaching a wider audience promoting our messages

The basics: Good practice when presenting data

Good practice when presenting data Things to consider Who is your audience? What is the story you want to tell? How to present it (types of chart) Annotating your chart Colour Declutter

1. Who is your audience? What are their interests? What do they know? How technically skilled are they? How much detail do they want? e.g. Academic paper vs news release vs internal paper vs website…

2. What is the story you want to tell? What action do you want the user to take? A table presents data A chart illustrates a key message from the data Far less detail

Source: Mid-year population estimates for Scotland (NRS) The table gives the detail for the people who need it The chart gives an overview Source: Mid-year population estimates for Scotland (NRS)

How will you present the information? Type of chart

Source: Scotland’s Population (NRS) Bar charts Easy to understand, and compare data Registered deaths and main causes of death, Scotland 2014 Source: Scotland’s Population (NRS)

Line charts Try not to include too many lines Good for time series Try not to include too many lines Label lines directly if possible Check you can still understand it when printed in black and white

Source: Scotland’s Population (NRS) As printed in black & white Changed the line formats so they are easy to distinguish, even in black and white Added the labels alongside the lines they referred to Highlighted Scotland, as this was a Scottish publication Made the axes fonts bigger/clearer Removed gridlines (optional) Added a footnote to explain missing data Source: Scotland’s Population (NRS)

Source: Registers of Scotland In the first version, there is lots of information – too much! In the second example, we highlighted a few of the council areas. Can still see the overall trends, but it’s easier to follow. If you need to know about a specific council area, refer to the table rather than the chaart. Source: Registers of Scotland

Pie charts

Source: Household estimates (NRS) When there are a number of categories, a bar chart is usually a much easier way of comparing the figures than a bar chart. Source: Household estimates (NRS)

3D charts Does the orange segment (C) look bigger in the top or bottom chart? It is exactly the same pie chart, rotated Other types of 3D chart are also misleading / difficult to interpret Don’t use 3D pie charts!

3D charts are harder to read / interpret Source: Household estimates (NRS)

License information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Some 3D charts are very hard to read / interpret! (From a blog looking at different ways of presenting data) Source: Tony Hirst: blog.ouseful.info/2015/07/22/doodling-with-3d-animated-charts-in-r License information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Note: this chart was included in a blog describing different ways of illustrating data.

Source: Scotland’s Population (NRS) Annotating charts Scotland’s population structure, 2016 Adding text to the chart to highlight interesting features, helps people understand it. Source: Scotland’s Population (NRS)

Source: Scotland’s Population 2015 (NRS)

Source: Household projections for Scotland (NRS)

Colour Use it: sparingly consistently with accessibility in mind Use colour to highlight key patterns Colours should be distinguisible even if colourblind The effects should be visible when printed in black and white Need sufficient contrast from background (contrastchecker.com)

This is a very pretty photo, but hard to tell what to look at. Lots of infographics are like this!

Here, the colour is used to draw your eye to something specific.

colororacle.org Bear in mind that people who are colour blind can see things quite differently. There are websites that let you test what your image will look like to people with different types of colour blindness.

Source: Household estimates (NRS) Used colour to highlight key trends Put labels next to the lines In the second chart, colour is used to highlight the message. Annotation is added, to give context. Source: Household estimates (NRS)

Source: Household estimates (NRS) As produced in Excel Shades of one colour As printed in black & white Shades of one colour Added a border to each bar Alternated dark & light colours to improve differentiation Source: Household estimates (NRS)

Declutter Are these necessary? Gridlines Graph border line Axis lines and tick marks More than one axis per dimension Decimal places / rounding

Source: Household estimates (NRS) As produced in Excel Source: Household estimates (NRS)

Source: Household estimates (NRS) Labelling each line Source: Household estimates (NRS)

Source: Household estimates (NRS) With some formatting work Bigger text Changed colour scheme Labelled lines Made grid-lines paler Added annotation to describe the main trend Source: Household estimates (NRS)

Source: Household estimates (NRS) Alternative style (same chart) Removed axes Added values to lines Removed most date labels Used pictures instead of words to label lines Title describes the trend Source: Household estimates (NRS)

No ‘right or wrong’ choice e.g. first may be better in a publication and second in an infographic Source: Household estimates (NRS)