2. Creating Visuals and Data Displays
Chapter 16
Creating Visuals and Data Displays
Using Visuals and Data Displays
Guidelines for Creating Visuals and Data Displays
Integrating Visuals and Data Displays
Chapter 16. Creating Visuals and Data Displays

3. Chapter 16 Learning Objectives
LO 16-1 When to use visuals and data displays
LO 16-2 How to create effective visuals and data displays
LO 16-3 How to integrate visuals and data displays into text
LO 16-4 How to use conventions for specific visuals and data displays

4. Visuals and Data Displays
Help make data meaningful
Support arguments
Help communicate points
Enhance oral presentations
Present numbers dramatically
Visuals and data displays are design elements that help make data meaningful and support arguments in your proposal and reports. They can also help communicate your points in documents such as brochures, s, newsletters, reports, social media postings, and other business messages. Visuals and data displays are particularly helpful for presenting numbers dramatically.

5. Use Visuals and Data Displays To…
Present ideas completely
Find relationships
Make points vivid
Emphasize material
Present material concisely, with less repetition
The ease of creating visuals and data displays by computer may make people use them uncritically. Use a visual only to achieve a specific purpose. Never put in numbers or visuals just because you have them; instead, use them to convey information the audience needs or wants.
Every visual should tell a story

6. Guidelines for Visuals and Data Displays
Check quality of data
Determine story you want to tell
Choose visual that fits the story
Follow conventions
Use color and decoration with restraint
Be accurate and ethical
Use these six steps to create effective visuals and data displays. Each will be discussed in more detail on the following slides.

7. 1. Check Quality of Data Check data come from reliable source
Check you have data for all factors you should consider
Do not use visuals of unreliable data
Your data display is only as good as the underlying data. Also check that you have data for all factors you should consider. If the data may not be reliable, you’re better off not using visuals. The visual picture will be more powerful than verbal disclaimers, and the audience will be misled.

8. 2. Determine Story You Want to Tell
Good stories may
Support a hunch you have
Surprise or challenge knowledge
Show unexpected trends or changes
Have commercial or social significance
Provide information needed for action
Be relevant to audience
Every visual and data display should tell a story. Stories can be expressed in complete sentences that describe something that happens or changes. The sentence can also serve as the title of the visual or data display.

9. 2. Determine Story You Want to Tell
To find stories
Focus on a topic
Simplify the data on that topic and convert number to simple units
Look for relationships and changes
Process the data to find more stories
To find stories in the data, follow these for suggestions.

10. 3. Choose the Right Visual for the Story
Use tables when audience needs exact values
Use pie charts to show parts of a whole
Visuals and data displays are not interchangeable. Good writers choose the one that best matches the purpose of the communication. Follow these guidelines to choose the right visuals and data displays. Use a table when the audience needs to be able to identify exact values. To compare a part to the whole, use a pie chart.

11. 3. Choose the Right Visual for the Story, continued…
Use bar charts to compare items, show relationships
Use paired charts to tell complex stories
To compare one item to another item, use a bar chart. Use paired chars to tell complex stories.

12. 3. Choose the Right Visual for the Story, continued…
Uses line charts to
Compare items over time
Show frequency or distribution
Show correlations
Use line charts to compare items over time, to show frequency or distribution, or to show correlations.

13. 3. Choose the Right Visual for the Story, continued…
Use photographs to
Create a sense of authenticity
Show item in use
Use drawings to
Show dimensions
Emphasize detail
Use photographs to create a sense of authenticity or show the item in use. Use drawings to show dimensions, show processes, emphasize detail, or eliminate unwanted detail.

14. 3. Choose the Right Visual for the Story, continued…
Use maps to emphasize location
Use maps to emphasize location or compare items in different locations.

15. 3. Choose the Right Visual for the Story, continued…
Use Gantt charts to show timelines
Use Gantt charts to show time lines for proposals or projects.

16. 4. Follow Conventions for Designing Visuals
Visuals usually contain
Title that tells story visual shows
Clear indication of what data are
Clearly labeled units
Labels or legends identifying axes, colors, symbols, etc.
Source of data used to create visual
Source of visual if not your work
Follow conventions when creating visuals and data displays. When you stray from conventions, you may confuse or alienate your audience.

17. 5. Use Color and Decoration with Restraint
Audiences interpret color based on contexts
Color connotations vary among cultures and professions
Red = go in China; stop in U.S.
Blue = masculinity in U.S.; criminality in France; strength/fertility in Egypt
Use minimum shading and lines
For B&W graphs, use shades of gray
Color makes visuals more dramatic, but it also creates some problems. Colors may be interpreted positively or negatively depending on their context and the unique experiences of the people viewing them.

18. 6. Be Sure Visual is Accurate, Ethical
Make sure audience does not have to study visual to learn main point
Distinguish between actual and estimated or projected values
Include the context of data
Avoid perspective and 3-D graphs
Avoid combining with multiple scales
Use images that are bias-free
To be a trustworthy communicator and to avoid misleading your audience, strive to be ethical in your choice of visuals or data displays and ensure their accuracy. Always double-check your visuals to be sure the information is accurate. Also, many visuals have accurate labels but misleading visual shapes. Visuals communicate quickly; audiences remember the shape, not the labels. If the reader has to study the labels to get the right picture, the visual is unethical even if the labels are accurate. To ensure accurate and ethical visuals, differentiate between actual and estimated or projected values, avoid perspective and three-dimensional graphs, avoid combining graphs with different scales, and use images of people carefully to avoid sexist, racist, or other exclusionary visual statements.

19. Integrating Visuals into Your Text
Refer to every visual in your text
Refer to the table or figure number, not the title
Ex: Table 10 shows a detailed comparison…
Ex: Data in Figure 6 reveals a marked trend of…
Put visual as soon after reference as space and page design permit
Ex: As Figure 3 shows (page 10), …
Ex: (See Table 2 on page 14)
Refer in your text to every visual and data display. Normally the text gives the table or figure number but not the title. Put the visual as soon after your reference as space and page design permit. If the visual must go on another page, tell the reader where to find it.

20. Integrating Visuals into Your Text, continued...
Summarize main point of visual before the visual itself
Amount of discussion depends on audience, complexity of visual, and importance of point
After visual, evaluate the data, discuss its implications
Weak: Listed below are the results.
Better: As Figure 4 shows, sales doubled in the last decade.
Summarize the main point of a visual or data display before you present it. Then when readers get to it, they’ll see it as confirmation of your point. How much discussion a visual or data displays needs depends on the audience, the complexity of the visual, and the importance of the point it makes.