Website data visualisation & charting

Data can be an incredibly powerful tool, however in its raw form it requires both time and aptitude to make sense of and digest. Charts, tables, and data visualisations can really transform data, making them accessible and understandable, and depending on editorial slant, helping you tell a story or narrative, which is either perceptive or even potentially deceptive depending on presentation.

As a web design agency, we are lucky enough to work with an interactive medium which allows us to not only represent data dynamically, but most excitingly this allows us to create data visualisations which could not be delivered in transitional print media. Get in touch today to see how we can help.

Regular issues & considerations

Multi device - A print based visualisation may be limited by its lack of interactivity, however it does not have to deal with the issues of multi-device display, where a chart designed for the desktop becomes unreadable on a mobile phone (for example a world map is with country rankings is too small to used on mobile unless you zoom in/out etc) Here we need to think about how visualised should vary across platforms and we have to decide where we make comprises as sometimes a simple table might be more efficient, even if it is not visually as exciting

Comparative data - We are often asked to create interactive charting views which allow users a wide range of comparative views, however the reality is that often different indicators or dimensions are un-comparable as units such as currency vs weight may not make combative sense, sales can vary dramatically or that collection methods and assumptions make it dangerous to compare. Here a ballance needs to be struck between predetermining the views vs allowing users control whilst potentially over complicating the the users experience.

Infographics - Infographics are a particularly interesting and effective extension of data visualisations, however infographics are generally more than a pretty chart, telling a story or expressing an editorial representation of the data. A common struggle in creating infographics is the idea that a data set can be transformed into an infographic without taking time to establish the narrative and editorial slant, which clients can (understandably) feel uncomfortable about.

Stunning visualisations - Clients often reference amazingly visualisations as examples of what they want, however the data may not actually make sense in these more visually impressive formats, and sometimes a simple pie or bar chart is the most understandable and accessible representation of the data. Whilst we all want to impress, it is essential to prioritise the viewers understanding of the data…. Sometimes simple is best.

We have developed considerable experience as an agency helping clients transform their data into engaging data visualized within both the social & economic development and financial services sectors. Whether it be Chart.js, Highcharts, Google charts, D3, Tableau or a highly optimised bits of custom code, rest assured we have both the understanding and technical tools to create insightful and visually beautiful data visualisations.

A portfolio of experience and results to be proud of:

African Visa Openness Initiative

Out brief was simply to help the AVO initiative to publish their report online, however after we explored the data, it quickly became apparent that we could actually do something quite different. Rather than simply reproduce the existing charts in the print based report, we created interactive mapping views which allows visitors to explore the data in a far more tangible and meaningful manner, ensuring visitors could easily see how different countries visa policies varied in relation to each other.

OECD African Economic Outlook

The African Economic Outlook is one of the most important publications in African economics. We were tasked by OECD with building a website platform to manage the AEC over a 5 year period which provided a distributed authoring process, with approval & governance workflows ensuring a large distributed team could work efficiently together. The platform pulled live data feeds from OECD’s statistics platform, transforming an XML data feed into an array of different charts and visualisations within the reports. The platform also generated the print ready report ensuring no double entering of data was required.

WHO - Global Health Observatory

The Global Health Observatory is WHO’S heath data department, responsible for disseminating all the data and statistics held by the World Health Organisation. We were commissioned to redesign the GHO website as the existing website had become convoluted and confusing for most visitors. We worked with the WHO and stakeholders to redefine the visitor journey, redesigning the entire platform, which is a considerable undertaking.

Disability Portal - DIFID/Leonard Cheshire

We were commissioned to build a disability data portal by DFID and Leonard Cheshire. The portals objective is not only to publish data in an accessible manner, but also to highlight the gaps in data and statistics to key stakeholders, helping to drive policy change. One of the most interesting challenges in this project was the need to display desegregate data in a meaningful manner. Obviously this project had to adhere to the highest accessibility standards.

African Regional Integration Index

Our brief was to digitise the print based report, helping to create an online variant of the publication. We quickly ascertained that the result would not actually translate in a meaningful manner, and instead worked with the client to develop a website which allowed visitors to explore the data and findings from a regional, thematic and country based perspective. Here we were able to use interactive charting views to reality extend what the report offered.