The Power of the Data Visualization Designer

Each April, the #30DayChartChallenge offers designers and data enthusiasts the chance to flex their data visualization muscles. When I participated with Citizen Codex this year, I stepped outside my role as a traditional designer. I was responsible not only for designing the charts but also for sourcing, cleaning, and analyzing the data. This process drove home for me why specialists are so important.

‍

Across the data visualization world, specialized professions bring unique perspectives and skill sets. When organizations build out data teams and let analysts, researchers, and visualization designers exercise their strengths, it results in clearer and more insightful visual storytelling.

‍

Why a Designer?

What makes a data visualization designer unique is that their background is often in graphic design. They’re not typically analysts, researchers, data scientists, or developers. Data visualization designers are more concerned with the visual elements of design and how they can be used to convey a message clearly and compellingly. This practicality is what sets visual design apart from traditional “art.” So it makes sense that graphic designers work well with data because their brains are already wired to communicate with design.

‍

Designers bring design principles to data visualizations—attuned to concepts like alignment, repetition, contrast, hierarchy, space, and balance. That’s why data visualizations often “look better” when a designer is involved, even if you can’t articulate why. They’re not just making it pretty. They’re making it effective.

‍

When you pair a designer with a data analyst, they elevate the most important insights in a way that engages a reader effortlessly. The key is establishing a highly collaborative relationship between the two, not just transactionally passing off the data. One way to do this is to create open channels of communication where questions can be freely asked, suggestions made, and feedback received. It should feel like a partnership, where both parties have equal ownership of the final product.

‍

For example, take a few graphics made for two different Citizen Codex articles. The “Before” shows how the chart started, usually as a rough draft embedded in a Google Doc along with the article text. The “After” is the final product once I was brought into the conversation, meeting with the author or analyst, asking questions about the data and what story the visualization is meant to tell.

‍

‍

The "What" and the "How"

In my experience as a Data Visualization Designer, I work best when I’m not the one who has collected, cleaned or decided on the data. Instead, I prefer to work with a subject matter expert (like an analyst, researcher, or journalist) who already has a grasp of the story they want to tell. They should be defining the “what.”

‍

I step in to answer the “how”:

• “How should this dataset be represented?”
• “How do we organize the data and structure the graphic so that the takeaways are prominent, clear, and quickly understood?”
• “How do we leverage best practices in design and choose colors or styles to convey meaning in an accessible way?”
• “How do we avoid burying readers with so much data they don’t know what they’re meant to learn from it?”
• “How can we visually curate the data to directly support the written analysis?”
• “How should we best deliver this graphic? As a report, an interactive, a standalone, etc.?"

‍

To answer these questions, I must have a strong understanding of the data behind the message. I don’t need to be as intimately familiar with the data as the analyst or data scientist. I just need a high-level explanation that usually takes 30 minutes or less. This quick but important conversation helps me be a better designer and helps the analyst refine their story.

‍

As visual storytelling grows in popularity, we must recognize the different roles needed to tell a great story. Deciding how to tell a story is just as valuable as deciding what the story is. When you make the effort to implement a team of specialists, you allow their areas of expertise to shine, letting them focus on what they do best. The result will always be a better and more compelling story.