Basic visual design principles facilitate understanding data charts

There are visual techniques that allow us to work with our audience members’ brains instead of against it. The gestalt principles of visual perception are basic design principles that describe how audiences read visual information like charts Dealing with Preattentive attributes are an easily noticeable difference in appearance useful for both quantitative and qualitative data

Audience perception follows a few basic rules, with some caveats

Complex visual inputs are normally processed in a zig-zag pattern, starting with the upper left, moving to the right, then down to the bottom left, and to the right

The more visual detail presented on the screen, the more likely your audience will experience cognitive overload and tune out Some types of charts or common design strategies violate this principle, so care must be taken in their design.

Design choices should be made deliberately This is even more important when data visuals are made by our software using default settings. Be explicit.