Criteria for good and bad visualizations

• content criteria
  • Is the visualization target group-compliant ?
    • suitable channel (presentation, email, etc.)?
    • is it a self-consumption situation or is the visualization (e.g. processed for a presentation?
    • Does the visualization convey a clear message, an understandable story ?
    • aesthetics?
      • colors,
      • fonts
• Technical criteria
  • Amount of details are easy to grasp? Too much? Not enough?
  • Visual perception and cognitive principles fulfilled?
    • Cognitive stress and disorder ( eng. Clutter ) considered?
    • shape principles of attention-drawing perception considered?
      • Closeness (Closeness means that elements that are placed close to each other are grouped together
      • Similarity (Similarity means that the human mind connects elements that are similar as part of a group)
      • Incompleteness (ability of the mind to fill gaps)
      • Inclusions (color or borders are used to highlight or contrast information)
      • Continuity (when we perceive something as part of a whole, even if the parts are actually not connected)
  • Strategic use of contrast?
  • Strategic use of color?

One underlying rule is to use the same expressions and the same visualizations for the same content. If the content is not the same, it should not look the same. Most times, the reports or dashboards that the CXO’s or decision makers receive from various departments are very different from each other – in terms of colors / shapes / notations and rules followed etc. Imagine how it would be if we can unify the appearance of all the reports within a company. It would avoid ambiguity which in turn will enable better decision making. IBCS provides us with a notation rule book that can be followed for all our visualizations and KPI’s across any domain. For eg. there is a clear cut way of differentiating actual from budget or one KPI from another KPI. So this helps maintain a consistency in reporting across the entire organization.