As an independent educator and author, Nick Desbarats has taught data visualization and information dashboard design to thousands of professionals in more than a dozen countries at such organizations as NASA, Bloomberg, Visa, the United Nations, Shopify, the Internal Revenue Service, the Central Bank of Tanzania, and many others.

In this excerpt (Chapter 15 of his book Practical Charts), Desbarats discusses the variety of ways to make charts more obvious to audiences, increasing the likelihood that the findings are understood.

The following six ways are explained:

1. Explicitly stating insights in chart callouts and titles.
2. Making design choices that feature the specific insight(s) to be communicated.
3. Visually highlighting the most important part(s) of a chart.
4. Adding comparison values.
5. Adding red/green (or orange/blue).
6. Showing calculated values instead of raw value.

Excerpted from Practical Charts by Nicholas P. Desbarats. Copyright © 2023.
Submit form below to download.