Book Image

Data Visualization: a successful design process

Book Image

Data Visualization: a successful design process

Overview of this book

Do you want to create more attractive charts? Or do you have huge data sets and need to unearth the key insights in a visual manner? Data visualization is the representation and presentation of data, using proven design techniques to bring alive the patterns, stories and key insights locked away."Data Visualization: a Successful Design Process" explores the unique fusion of art and science that is data visualization; a discipline for which instinct alone is insufficient for you to succeed in enabling audiences to discover key trends, insights and discoveries from your data. This book will equip you with the key techniques required to overcome contemporary data visualization challenges. You'll discover a proven design methodology that helps you develop invaluable knowledge and practical capabilities.You'll never again settle for a default Excel chart or resort to "fancy-looking" graphs. You will be able to work from the starting point of acquiring, preparing and familiarizing with your data, right through to concept design. Choose your "killer" visual representation to engage and inform your audience."Data Visualization: a Successful Design Process" will inspire you to relish any visualization project with greater confidence and bullish know-how; turning challenges into exciting design opportunities.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Data Visualization: a successful design process
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Approaching the finishing line


Here is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

"You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."

The finishing line is now getting ever closer. However, apart from those projects where there is a clear finite deadline to work to, the judgment of when a design is actually finished is not necessarily always obviously recognizable. A deadline provides this finality, but open-ended projects need their own completion point to be determined. It is natural to keep tweaking, refining, and enhancing your piece but eventually you need to call out something as being completed.

A useful signpost to note your progress was proposed by designer Martin Wattenberg (co-developer on the "Wind Map" project that we saw earlier). Martin describes the subtle but telling change in your role as you shift from debugging a design (programmatically or figuratively) to finding yourself becoming an enthusiastic...