Visualizations should express your central message, clearly and immediately.
Plus, consider these additional tips:
- Always label and caption your visualizations.
- Use scaling and axes appropriately in your visualizations. (Don't mislead your audience!)
- Avoid overdoing it. (Sticking to one main finding per visualization helps.)
- Consider the people represented by your visualizations. (Choose language, color, and iconography carefully.)
- Ask people outside your team to review your visualizations.
- Use visualizations when simpler communications won't do. (In other words, consider: do you really need the visualization?)
If you don't want to take our word for it, we highly recommend reading the article, Ten Simple Rules for Better Figures, for more tips and longer explanations and examples on the tips above. This article is cited, along with other resources, on this tab of the guide.