Storytelling with Data

chapter fivethink like a designer

You know what great design looks like when you see it, but how do you actually achieve it—particularly if you don’t consider yourself a designer? SWD covered four topics to help you think like a designer: affordances, aesthetics, accessibility, and acceptance. In this chapter, we’ll practice applying these concepts and illustrate how minor changes can help take your visual from acceptable to exceptional. First, let’s cover a quick reminder of what I mean by these terms.

In visual design, affordances are things we do to make it clear how to process what we show. This builds off of the lessons you’ve practiced in Chapters 3 and 4: tie related things visually together, push less important elements to the background, and bring the critical stuff forward. Direct your audience’s attention intentionally to where you want them to look.

Spending time on the aesthetics of your visuals can translate into people taking more time with your work or having the patience to overlook issues. Attention to detail comes into play: often many seemingly minor components add up to create a great or poor experience. To achieve the former, we must edit ruthlessly.

People are each different, and accessibility means recognizing this and working to create designs that are usable by people of diverse skills and abilities. We’ve touched on colorblindness, but that only scratches the surface. We’ll undertake exercises that will help you think about your designs more robustly. ...