Data visualization is a powerful way to communicate your case study results and insights. It can help you tell a compelling story, highlight key findings, and persuade your audience. But how do you choose the right tools or platforms for creating data visualizations? Here are some factors to consider and some examples of popular options.
Before you start creating data visualizations, you need to define your purpose and audience. What is the main message or goal of your case study? Who are you trying to reach and influence? How will they access and interact with your data visualizations? These questions will help you decide what type, format, and style of data visualizations are suitable for your case study.
Your data visualizations won't carry any weight if you don't have a clear sense of the story you're trying to tell with them. You need to choose a problem-and-solution story that highlights some of the same pain points as your target audience. Make sure you're also not just focused on success. Give the whole journey, including potential solutions that you had to trash for whatever reason. No story is powerful without struggle.
Another factor to consider is the type and amount of data and analysis you have for your case study. Do you have quantitative or qualitative data? Do you have simple or complex data? Do you have one or multiple data sources? Do you need to perform any calculations, transformations, or aggregations on your data? These questions will help you choose the tools or platforms that can handle your data and analysis needs.
A third factor to consider is the design and customization options of the tools or platforms you use for data visualization. How much control do you have over the appearance and functionality of your data visualizations? How easy is it to change the colors, fonts, labels, legends, axes, filters, and interactivity of your data visualizations? How well do they match your brand identity and style guidelines? These questions will help you choose the tools or platforms that can create data visualizations that look professional and appealing.
When creating case studies, there are many data visualization tools or platforms available in the market, each with its own features, advantages, and disadvantages. Examples of popular ones include Tableau, Power BI, Google Data Studio, and Canva. Tableau is a powerful and user-friendly platform that allows for interactive dashboards and reports with various types of data visualizations. Power BI is a cloud-based platform with hundreds of data sources and built-in or custom visuals. Google Data Studio is a free and easy-to-use platform with templates or custom visuals. And Canva is a graphic design platform with icons, images, fonts, colors, and shapes to create infographics, charts, diagrams, and more. Depending on your purpose, audience, data, and design preferences, you can choose the one that suits your needs and goals best.
1. Most popular data visualization tool remains MS Excel due to is familiarity with target audience, ease of working with small data 2. Tableau will be useful for 'trained users' who can work the the numerous features of the software, keep updating the visuals as required or ensure accuracy of the dashboards. 3. Nowdays, SaaS platforms like Zoho have their own inbuilt data analysis and visualization tools.
Personally, I still use Powerpoint with original images for my case studies, because most of mine are people-oriented stories, not dependent on a lot of numbers and statistics. But I love using Canva as a design tool.