Six Chart Design Lessons from Visualizations of COVID-19
Important reminders for social scientists when creating visualizations
Adapted from a talk for the American Evaluation Association’s Data Visualization and Reporting Technical Interest Group
I remember the first COVID-19 chart that came across my news feed that prompted questions I couldn’t answer. At the time, the charts were double-digit case counts from Singapore with active, recovered, and fatal cases displayed on individual graphs — a simpler time than what we see on the tracker charts of cases and deaths from COVID-19, crowded with lines from dozens of countries and still trending up in December.
A month later, I still couldn’t get a clear definition for what qualified as a “recovered” case, even asking colleagues working at the CDC. The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWRs) had started to contain early learning about the novel coronavirus and the growing case counts in the US. I felt alarmed when I saw that Tableau had launched a ‘ready to use’ workbook for anyone to jump start their analysis of the case data and wrote 10 Considerations Before You Create Another Chart about COVID-19, which still has relevant lessons months later.
Now, I’ve delivered nearly 50 talks, written articles, and given podcast…
