I think a good visualization includes 4 features as below:
- INFORMATION IS CORRECT
- The definition of visualization is 'using different kinds of visual representation of information designed to enable communication, analysis, discovery, exploration.' Therefore, the most important thing of visualization is that the information must be correct, otherwise, no matter how fancy the diagram is, there is no need to look at it.
- IDENTIFY RELATIONSHIPS
- One part of visualization is used to describe data sets, so users can get conclusions from the data. Usually, there are more than one variable are provided on the diagram, so identify relationships between variable is important. This includes mark labels clearly and using multiple colors that have high contrast to represent different categories.
- LESS IS MORE
- Another important thing is that when users make a quick glance at the visualization, they should have an immediately figure out what is the topic. Therefore, instead of using too much decorations to cause confusion and distraction, the visualization should be as simple as possible. The choice of illustrations in this case is important. Good illustrations can help users to decode the graph, so adding too many irrelevant but fancy decorations is no better than removing borders, background-colors.
- USING RIGHT CHART
- Sometimes when other three requirements are fulfilled; the visualization is still not good because of wrong diagram. Different kinds of data set are suitable for different kinds of chart, using one instead of another can confuse users to fully understand information.