Chart Design
General Principles and Best Practices
IT 7113 Data Visualization
J.G. Zheng
Spring 2023
http://idi.Kennesaw.edu/it7113/
Content Overview
This lecture notes discuss some chart design
principles and selected best practices.
• “CASE” design principles
• Example best practices and patterns aligned
with the principles
• Develop and conform to guidelines and
standards
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Principles and Best Practices
• Principles are the high-level guidelines that may apply to a broader
scope of applications.
– Principles are usually summarized in highly concise terms or sentences
• Best practices extend principles to more specific cases.
– Contains more details and contexts, may be limited in scope.
– Often it is embodied in the form of “patterns”.
• Guidelines and standards are working rules set up for an environment
(an organization or an industry)
•
In practice, people use the terms loosely and generally refer to good
practices and/or pitfalls.
• Examples of principles/best practices
– https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-design-six-must-know-visualization-
principles-everyone-eppler/
– https://kevinlanning.github.io/DataSciLibArts/principles-of-data-
visualization.html#tufte-first-principles
– https://medium.com/google-design/redefining-data-visualization-at-google-
9bdcf2e447c6
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Basic Design Principles
• The CASE principles
4
Clarity
The chart delivers the message and makes
the point clearly.
Accuracy
Avoid data visual distortion and
disinformation.
Simplicity
Perceptually easy to locate and identify key
data and other information.
Elegance
Visual quality to attract audience and sustain
that sentiment and interest – Andy Kirk.
Clarity
• Clarity means being clear and straightforward, causing no confusion, and with sound logic
• Clear message serving the purpose
– Right chart for the purpose.
– The chart delivers the message and makes the point, straightforward and clearly.
– Self explanatory: use proper labels and annotations: title, legend, label, etc.
– Avoid unnecessary implication
• Consistency
– Message