In this post, I feature an example before-and-after from a recent workshop and discuss the importance of connecting the dots for your audience.

I spend a lot of time in my workshops and in my new book discussing preattentive attributes. These are elements like size, color, and position on page that, when used sparingly, can direct your audience's attention to where you want them to pay it when communicating with data. There is a test I like to employ when it comes to determining whether preattentive attributes are being used effectively: the "where are your eyes drawn?" test. In this post, I discuss this test, how to do it, and we look at a number of images using it and discussing the implications for data visualization.