Ethical Design Recommendations for COVID-19 Visualizations

The stakes are high, and the data is complex. Here are some practical recommendations for data designers working on COVID-19 visualizations

In March 2020, COVID-19 was classified as a global pandemic. Every day, we learn something new about the novel coronavirus and updated case numbers appear in datasets managed around the world. And every day, it seems, we also learn something new about data visualization.

Data Visualization Society members have been closely following the massive number of public visualization efforts using COVID-19 data. Some charts have informed and enabled understanding, while others have misrepresented the seriousness of the illness, unintentionally dehumanized or sensationalized represented subjects, or ignored the significant data quality issues around COVID-19 case and death data. Data visualization has played a key role in making sense of the current pandemic globally, and it will continue to do so.

The pandemic has resulted in an unusually large number of people, from a wide range of backgrounds, industries, and professions designing visualizations quickly, based on very similar, if not identical, underlying data. In many ways, COVID-19 data presents the same ethical…