Everyday Data Visualization

Radically improve the quality of the data visualizations you do every day by mastering core principles of color, typography, chart types, data storytelling, and more!

In Everyday Data Visualization you'll learn important design principles for the most common data visualizations:

• Harness the power of perception to guide a user's attention
• Effectively use color and other design fundamentals to bring data to life
• Choose the best chart type for the data and the story you want to tell
• Design for interactive visualizations
• Keep the user's needs first throughout your projects

Everyday Data Visualization is a field guide for design techniques that will improve the charts, reports, and data dashboards you build every day. The foundation of data visualization is storytelling, and this book gives you the tools you need to start telling those stories with clarity, precision, and flair! You'll learn how human brains perceive and process information, master modern accessibility standards, get the basics of color theory and typography, and more!

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the technology

Effective data visualization is about clear and thoughtful communication. A data visualizer goes beyond flat numbers to illuminate critical insights. Great data storytelling includes skills like attracting the reader's attention to the important points, accurately compensating for missing information, and adapting presentations to a live data flow.

About the book

Everyday Data Visualization gives you skills you'll use to enhance the most common data visualizations, including charts and tables, data dashboards, and infographics. You'll learn how to use color, typography, positioning, and choice of charts to catch and keep a viewer's attention. Discover the finesse and design rigor that goes into building delightful dashboards, and best practices for live visualizations that flex and grow as underlying data changes. Design fundamentals are broken down into their component parts so they're easy to understand--even if you're the analytical type! Best of all, everything you learn is tool-agnostic, with universal principles you can apply to any data stack.

About the reader

For readers experienced with data analysis tools.

About the author

Desireé Abbott is a Senior Consultant at Slalom. Her decade of experience in analytics has covered roles in product analytics, business intelligence, science, design, and software engineering. She is the instructor for a successful data visualization course on Coursera, produced by University of California Davis.