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

2. 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!

3. 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.

4. 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

5. The basics: Good practice when presenting data

6. 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

7. 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…

8. 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

9. 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)

10. How will you present the information?
Type of chart

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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

15. Pie charts

16. 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)

17. 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!

18. 3D charts are harder to read / interpret
Source: Household estimates (NRS)

19. 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:
Note: this chart was included in a blog describing different ways of illustrating data.

20. 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)

21. Source: Scotland’s Population 2015 (NRS)

22. Source: Household projections for Scotland (NRS)

23. 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)

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

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

26. 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.

27. 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)

28. 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)

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

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

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

32. 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)

33. 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)

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