#SWDchallenge: declutter & focus

SWDchallenge

Feb 1

Removing unnecessary elements and then using contrast and words to highlight important takeaways are strategies we commonly emphasize at storytelling with data. When you make graphs to communicate data to others, taking these steps can simplify things for your audience—making it clear where they should look and why.

Is there a study that proves this stuff works? That’s a question I’ve received related to these lessons more than once. While I have plenty of observational evidence, now there is a prominent study to point to as well. I partnered with the Visual Thinking Lab at Northwestern University on research summarized in the paper published in 2021 titled “Declutter and Focus: Empirically Evaluating Design Guidelines for Effective Data Communication” (by Ajani, K., et. al).

Participants were shown a mix of cluttered, decluttered, and focused and decluttered data visualizations. They were asked to evaluate the designs on aesthetics, clarity, professionalism, and trustworthiness, and also to redraw and recall topics and conclusions of the previously seen visuals. While decluttering the designs led to higher ratings on professionalism, adding focus to the design led to higher ratings on aesthetics and clarity and improved memory and recall.

The challenge

This month, we’d like you to transform a cluttered graph into a clean and focused visual.

For your starting point—the cluttered graph—you have a variety of options. It could be an existing visual (from the media, your own work, or elsewhere). It could be one you create using a graphing application’s default settings. Or, you could start by actively over-decorating a data viz—clutter it up intentionally, so you can feel things get lighter in the process of undoing. (The decluttering process always reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”)

That said, you don’t want to leave the feeling that you’ve taken things away without adding back anything of value. That’s where focusing attention comes into play. This can be achieved both through selective contrast (show people where to look) and words (tell people why you want them to look there, or what they will see). Let us know what you choose to highlight and why, along with any additional context that might be useful, in your commentary.

Share your creation in the SWD Community by February 28th at 5PM ET. Make your final decluttered and focused version the primary image in your submission; we’d also love to see your starting point to fully appreciate the transformation—please share that as a secondary image.

If there is any specific feedback or input that you would find helpful, include that detail in your commentary. Take some time to browse others’ submissions, too, and share your input via comments and datapoints over the course of the month.

I also invite you to tune in February 10th at 3PM ET to my live video podcast with Dr. Steven Franconeri, director of the aforementioned Visual Thinking Lab at Northwestern University. We’ll discuss data viz research and related topics. Those who attend can help steer the conversation through questions. Register to join (or stay tuned for the audio podcast later in February).