What is data visualization, anyways?
By: Sara Bastian
Tags: Data Visualization, D3js

Have you ever heard the belief that data drives the best decision-making, and been slightly confused at what this widely held assumption means in practice? How exactly do teams turn complex and sometimes dense data into insights and actionable decisions? The answer: by means of some sort of graphical representation or abstraction of analytics, or data visualization, for patterns to be more easily depicted and concepts (hopefully) universally conveyed.

There’s been a buzz generating around data visualization within the past few years — ‘data is the new oil’ becomes a mantra, creating a cornucopia of new opportunity, including the scope of how data is presented. And the way these depictions are presented matter, as the most effective visualizations are no longer your average infographic. Many types include animations, interactions, data transformation, hierarchies, complex bar graphs, line and area charts, scatterplots, radial layouts, arc diagrams, bubble charts, bubble maps, connection maps, network diagram, and the list goes on and on —take a look at the Data Visualisation Catalogue and you’ll see what I’m talking about here.

Up until recently, I held the naive belief that the work of data visualization lies in the hands of a graphic designer and was far removed from software development. These ideas were quickly debunked when I came across the work of Shirley Wu after an episode of the FrontEnd Happy Hour.

Shirley’s first job out of college was as a software engineer where she became responsible for building data visualizations and models with D3.js, a Javascript library for creating interactive visualizations on web browsers, and often considered the best option within the Javascript universe. She became integrated within the D3.js and the data visualization space, and now as a freelancer producing robust visualizations for several big name clients, she is a frequent speaker and contributor within the community. From one of her interviews, she speaks about her experience at first:

what I was doing was just the code part… but there is also the design part, and the data analysis, and part a whole industry of data journalism that’s about storytelling…. there’s what I try to do now, which is that to balance the telling the data or telling a story that’s informed by the data versus kind of the more artistic thing, I think there’s always attention of how artistic do you go or how creative do you go, so that it catches people’s attention versus how much do you restrain that, so that it’s easy for people to get what you’re trying to say right away

I love that Shirley points to this underlying truth that data visualization is essentially a manner of storytelling, comprising of a message and audience. Data is no longer bound to the limitations of excel spreadsheets or interpretation and analysis by data scientists — with visualizations, data is becoming pervasive and more easily accessible. The nature of this storytelling is growing more and more consequential.

With the vast amount of data just out there, what makes data visualization so dire nowadays is the speed with which we can internalize its content. Abstract figures (i.e. numbers) can be transformed into a comprehensible visual that viewers can digest without much effort or thought needed. Exciting still is the rise in popularity and use of interactive visualization, as it offers the opportunity to bring the everyday reader into the once far-flung experience of data analysis.

At play with the creation of data visualization is a deep understanding in design, user-centric communication, and expression of information in a visual format, as well as technical prowess with relevant tools (or willingness to learn). The field is a true mix of art and science, and experts are careful with this process of capturing an idea or the reflection of some form of activity. According to a Harvard Business Review article,

Visualization is merely a process. What we actually do when we make a good chart is get at some truth and move people to feel it — to see what couldn’t be seen before. To change minds. To cause action.

Like Shirley, many frontend developers are often introduced to data visualization by chance. For Javascript developers, there are many libraries for building data visualizations. This blog, as well as this one, compare and contrast the available tools for JS engineers in 2021 specifically.

As someone from a humanities background diverging into the tech space, I’m fascinated by this interdisciplinary study of art and science, blending of right and left brain, where the creative and analytical don’t exist on their own, but rather work to complement each other.

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