Who Is Your Chart For?

Applying basic design principles, Part 4: Defining the context and the audience for a data visualization

This is the fourth in a series of articles that illustrate how basic design principles can improve information display. The previous article focused on cleaning up the details of chart design. Here, we’ll talk about how to define the audience for your chart.

Start by defining the audience that you want to reach. Image source.

People often come to me wanting to know which visualization is the best one for their situation. Before you pick a chart type or visualization approach, it’s important to understand the context in which the chart will be used. The context for a visualization can be defined in many ways, but ultimately it comes down to understanding both the audience and the purpose for the chart.

Defining your audience

A visualization can speak to many audiences and groups, and each one will have a unique set of needs. I like to include both the person and the high-level task/context in my audience description to help narrow things down. Notice how different the audience needs could be for the first two bullets, even though both focus on experts.

• Experts reading a scientific publication to understand someone else’s work
• Experts analyzing their data to…