How YOU can improve your Data Visualisations (wow!)

Whether we like it or not, data is now an inescapable element of modern working life. However, many businesses still aren’t that good with it. MAG-O Senior Finance Analyst, Rory Gibson, gives his tips on how to best present data to various stakeholders 

There are many different formats in which information can be presented (Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs or live dashboards etc.) However the most important thing to remember is that visuals are key. There is no point spending hours analysing, shaping and correcting your data if no-one understands it when you finally present.

Here at MAG-O we are currently undergoing a large project to create data visualisations for all of our business units, so that we are better able to understand and track our business performance.

Here are my tips for how best to present your data, and create useful information:

Tell a story:

We’ve all seen it before; someone has spent a long time analysing something, chucked a load of data onto a slide or visualisation, but hasn’t taken the time to explain what it all means.

Make sure that when you present your data, you know what you want people to see. People want to be drawn to conclusions. They want you to tell them what exactly is in the data. Tell them the story, so that they can go away and action it.

Don’t crowd your visual:

Similar to the above, many people often massively overcomplicate their visualisations. The figure below is a great example. There is too much going on there, meaning that the audience can’t easily draw conclusions and therefore won’t absorb anything. They have been overloaded.

It is much better to reduce the amount of information in the visualisation, to make the key trends clearer and easier to understand.

Put your most important information at the top left

Humans are taught to read from a very young age, and most humans are taught to do so by reading from the top left of a page across and down. As such, make sure that the most important information in your visualisation is in the top left, as that is where the eye is naturally drawn.

By placing important information there, you increase the chances that it will be seen and absorbed. Similarly, try and tell your story from top left to bottom right. Your visualisation will flow better.

Keep it simple:

It’s very tempting, given the range and quality of data visualisation tools out there, to produce some incredibly complex graphic. However, doing so is often counterproductive.

The creator of the visual below has clearly taken a lot of time when producing it to make it look beautiful, and it is... but what is it telling me? What conclusions should I draw? It is better to keep it simple so that your audience understands.

I’m not saying don’t use complex visualisations if they genuinely are the best way of representing your information, but on the other hand, everyone understands a bar chart…

Provide context:

Sales are up against last month, great news! …or is it? Should they have been higher? What was the target? What was the budget?  A piece of information is useless unless context is provided with it.

For example, airports are highly seasonal businesses, whereby we have massive peaks and troughs. There will always be more revenue in the August school holidays than February, so telling me that sales are higher in August than February doesn’t tell me anything. Only by providing comparatives can we know if performance is good or bad.

Consider your audience:

Information can sometimes be imposed on an audience, ‘This is how I have presented the information, and this is how you need to look at it’. That process should be the other way around. Seek feedback from your audience about what they need to know.

For example, a Lounge manager at Manchester airport does not need to know about how much people are spending in duty free. Whilst they may well be interested, ultimately, they are going to be more interested in how many passengers are in their terminal, what percentage of those passengers are coming to the lounge, and how much on average they are paying.

Always consider your audience when producing a visualisation, as they are more likely to use it if it’s relevant, or tells them what they want to know...

There is no one correct way to present information. If you give 20 people the same data set, they will produce 20 entirely different visualisations. There is no singular answer to ‘what does a great visualisation look like’, but by sticking to the above, you will have a much better chance of producing a good one, rather than one of the shockers displayed above.

I hope you enjoyed my blog; If you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to drop me an email on rory.gibson@magairports.com