'Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design'

Anyone who has reason to use quantitative and qualitative methods in their professional or academic duties will need to grasp the opportunities offered by data visualisation. Whether this subject will prove to be a significant part of your duties or more of an occasional encounter, this book will support your needs.

The primary intended audiences are undergraduates, postgraduates and early-career researchers in the social sciences. While the examples chosen are designed to be as relevant as possible to these readers, the book will still be relevant to those across the spectrum of arts and humanities through to the natural sciences.

This book is intended to offer an accessible route for novices to start their data visualisation learning journey. For those readers already familiar with the basics of data visualisation, the content will hopefully contribute to refining those existing capabilities. It is not necessarily targeted at experienced visualisation practitioners, though there may be some new perspectives to enrich their convictions, reinforce existing knowledge or challenge their approaches.

Over the last decade, from when I was starting to draft the first edition, we have witnessed significant growth in the data visualisation field. There are more practitioners, more studios, more events, more communities, more people writing about the subject, more people studying it, more people with jobs that have ‘visualisation’ in their title. Organisations of all shapes and sizes, across all industry types and locations, are embracing the need to do more with the data they have, to get more value from it, for both internal and external benefit. If data is everywhere and a concern for all, the effective visualisation of it should be seen as an adjacent necessity.

The people interested in this field cover all backgrounds. You can be a market researcher, a librarian or a data analyst looking to enhance your data capabilities. Perhaps you are a skilled graphic designer or web developer looking to take your portfolio of work into a more data driven direction. Maybe you are in a managerial position and, though not directly involved in the creation of visualisation work, you might wish to improve the sophistication of the language you use to coordinate or commission others who are. Everyone needs the lens and vocabulary to evaluate work effectively.

Data visualisation is an authentically multidisciplinary discipline for which nobody can expect to arrive, as a new practitioner, with all constituent capabilities fully formed. But, to extract the most benefit from this book, it is reasonable to point towards certain important (arguably non-negotiable) traits:

• Strong numeracy is necessary as well as a familiarity with basic statistics.
• While it is reasonable to assume limited prior knowledge of data visualisation, there should be a strong desire to want to learn it. The demands of learning a craft like this take time and effort; the capabilities will need nurturing through ongoing learning and practice. They are not going to be achieved overnight or acquired just from reading this book. Any book that claims to be able to magically inject mastery through just reading that one text is over-promising and likely to under-deliver.
• The best data visualisers possess inherent curiosity. You should be the type of person who is naturally drawn to question the world around them. Your instinct for discovering, then sharing, answers to your curiosities will be at the heart of this activity.
• There are no expectations of your having any prior familiarity with design principles, but an appetite to embrace some of the creative aspects presented in this book will heighten the impact of your work. Time to unleash your imagination!
• If you are somebody fortunate enough to already possess a strong creative flair, this book will guide you through when and, crucially, when not to tap into this sensibility. You should be willing to increase the rigour of your analytical decision-making and be prepared to have your creative thinking informed more fundamentally by data rather than just instinct.
• No particular technical skills are required to get value from this book, as I will explain shortly. But you will ideally have some basic knowledge of spreadsheets and experience of working with data, regardless of using any particular tool.

As the book explores, data visualisation should be seen as a channel of communicating. As with verbal and written forms, it is a portable and adaptable communication practice involving techniques that are subject matter agnostic. Throughout this book you will encounter examples from different industries and different authors, covering many different topics. Do not be deterred by any example being about a subject different to your own area of interest. Look beyond the subject matter and you will see analytical and design choices that are just as applicable to you and your work: a line chart showing political forecasts involves the same thought process as would a line chart showing stock prices changing or average global temperatures rising. A line chart is a line chart, regardless of the subject matter.

The type of data you are working with is the only legitimate restriction to the design methods you might employ, not your subject and certainly not traditions in your subject. ‘Waterfall charts are only for people in finance’, ‘Maps are only for cartographers charting journeys’, ‘Sankey diagrams are only for engineers’: never reply upon absolute statements that proclaim universal certainties like these. Rather, you are encouraged to embark on the learning of this subject with an open mind. Forget what you believe or have been told is the normal approach and this will better facilitate the expanding of your capabilities.

Although the English language dominates written discourse, the interest in the subject and work created from studios through to graphics teams originates everywhere. Data visualisation is global, not just something practised in specific geographic regions. There are cultural influences and different flavours in design sensibility around the world which enrich the field, but otherwise it is a practice common and accessible to all. The contents of this book seek to represent the thoughts and works from the widest possible range of this global community.