VISUAL COMMUNICATION
6 Principles of Good Design for Effective Visual Communication
As a data scientist, you need to get your message across to the stakeholders in the most effective manner. Use these principles to help you do so!
Shekhar has been working rigorously on this presentation for a long time now. It contains the preliminary findings from the first set of data his team is getting from the field. He has applied the latest models he has in his repertoire and has got the tabulated results and charts he got from his statistical analysis software. He needs to show the presentation to his manager one last time before it is ready to be presented to the external client the next day. Everything is ready. He enters his manager’s cabin and starts his presentation. After 15 minutes of him speaking, his manager says … “It is a good presentation for the wrong audience. We are not presenting to a team of data scientists but to a team of policymakers from the state government. I am afraid, but you need to rework it now.”
I am sure you must have landed yourself in similar situations many times. You have worked hard on a project, collected the data, analyzed it with the help of software using the appropriate models, and created charts for descriptive analysis or predictive analysis depending upon the research question, only to be told by your manager that the work is not relevant. The worse scenario is when your client says to you … “so what? How can it help me? What do I get from it? What’s next?”, and so on.
Six Principles of Good Design
In this article, I present the principles of good design and how they can be used for effective visual communication that is helpful for the clients, and thus the business. They derive from the Principles of Good Design by Dieter Rams, a German industrial designer. They have been used not just by the product designers at innovative firms like Apple or Braun, but also by many people who communicate using digital media every day.
Principle 1 — Good design tells a story.
A chart or report is not a standalone piece having its own existence. It is used to make people do something. In order for them to do something, the information should tell a story. This story needs to be communicated using numbers and visuals both. In this chart, the author uses this chart to drive a point which is to approve the hiring of two more people.
Principle 2 — Good design is honest.
Researchers and statisticians are sometimes infamous for telling lies. Your charts should always be very honest and communicate exactly what you found, and not distort or present facts in a manner that hides the real picture. Listing out disclaimers and assumptions while communicating is helpful in this case.
Principle 3 — Good design makes a product understandable.
Language is one of the most powerful ways of changing the world. Any communication sent out should be in a way that makes the sense clear and understandable. Using short sentences and simpler words is better than using long and convoluted sentences. The same is true for charts too. Complex aesthetically pleasing charts should not be used in place of simple and understandable charts.
Principle 4 — Good design is aesthetic.
Function over form is important, but the form is required. Any piece of communication, be it a chart, report, or infographic, should be aesthetic and reflect the branding of the organization. If your organization has a playful nature, it should be reflected in your communication. If you want yourself to be known as a serious task-focused, it should be reflected in your communication. In this example, you can see how multiple colors on the left were replaced by just two colors.
Principle 5 — Good design makes a product useful.
When you are presenting something, it should have a purpose and not be there just for the sake of it. Any visual communication should help the user with something. If you are writing a report, it should list out possible ways how the information you are sharing can be used. If you are making a chart, add a caption showing how the information can be interpreted. In this example, you can see how the pilot program drove success.
Principle 6 — Good design is innovative.
There are many ways of presenting a piece of information to someone. It can be written or visual. It can be static or interactive. It can be a document or a presentation. Depending upon who the user is there can be various ways in which information can be presented using newer technology. Not every report needs to be a PDF document that is text-heavy. One can also have an infographic for presenting the information. Alternatively, one can also use interactive presentation software like Prezi. For example, this is a visual way of saying that visual communication is better than textual or auditory communication.
There are other four design principles that are more suitable for industrial products, and less suitable for visual communication. Those four are:
- Good design is long-lasting.
- Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
- Good design is environmentally friendly.
- Good design is as little design as possible.
Next time you are presenting to someone, have a look at these principles and get yourself into the shoes of your audience to know and empathize with what they are looking for and what their desires are.
