Data Visualization streamlines the process of perceiving data, understanding complex information & analyzing them. It boosts the decision making efficiency since you get to see the bigger picture making your analysis easier. Data can be shown in the form of graphs, tables, diagrams, maps, timelines, dashboards, etc. so that the data becomes easier to understand & analyze. As per a study ‘Human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text’.
It doesn’t matter which role you have in a company. Whether you’re a business owner, stakeholder, analytics specialist, sales representative, marketer, or any other decision-maker, you always deal with data. Reports & metrics, employee progress & customer satisfaction, ROI & profit, trends, market changes, spikes, declines, etc. There are so many things to track & keep them up to date. Showing all these as tables can complicate things & can be difficult to analyze. Hence, charts are a better way to analyze.
Advantages of Data Visualization
1. Organized
Data visualization organizes the most important pieces in a logical manner for you or your target audience rather than overloading you with data as in conventional tabular representation. It helps you illustrate the differences between seemingly identical datasets, which you can’t achieve with standard descriptive statistics.
2. Provides Greater Insights
The most obvious benefit of data visualization is that it aids in the discovery of patterns and trends by connecting the dots between different kind of information, thereby improving comprehension. It gives your data additional context and meaning, allowing you to better grasp its significance in the actual world and how you should use it.
3. Speedy Action
Using a graph or chart lets the human mind summarize the complex data in the shortest possible time when compared with spreadsheets or cluttered reports. Hence charts allows decision makers understand, analyze, and simultaneously act on the information hassle-freely and quickly.
4. Engage the Audience
Visuals that are properly designed are undeniably appealing and engaging. Data visualization paired with data storytelling can assist you in attracting and engaging your target audience. It might help you convey your message more successfully by giving greater weight to the facts you wish to offer.
5. Easier to identify market changes, trends & patterns
It is impossible to make predictions without the necessary information from the past and present. Trends over time can tell us where we were and where we are and what are our potentials.
Latest Trends in Data Visualization
Here are some of the data visualization trends that are on the rise and you must try to incorporate them in your work.
1. Interactive Data Visualization in Web Browsers
Businesses today have the opportunity to visualize their data for the web using client-side libraries such as CanvasJS. CanvasJS is a JavaScript library through which you can customize interactive data visualizations for the web.
2. Real-time Data
Through cloud-computing technology, companies have the ability to view & transmit the data in real-time from multiple locations at once. Real time visualizations take visuals to a new level by letting us update charts/graphs of any kind on demand. The library addressed in previous point seems to support real-time charts as well.
3. Video Infographics
According to a survey, 66% of people would prefer to learn about a new product or service through a video. Video infographics are short videos (usually 90 seconds or less) that visualize and explain data to the audience.
4. Augmented & Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is the future. Many experts predict VR will change the way we view data, and this trend is already beginning. VR technology is used with data visualization tools to create models, maps, games, and virtual events.
