[MUSIC] Welcome back. As you've seen, data visualizations come in a wide and expanding range of forms, have many different purposes and have diverse sets of potential audiences. Are they analysts who need to comb through data to find interesting patterns, trends, and anomalies? Or are they executives who need quick, clear, and reliable summaries of about some initiative or campaign? One size definitely does not fit all. In this lesson, I'll present a basic framework for thinking about audiences, purposes and context for your data visualizations. The more you can understand, empathize and anticipate the needs of your intended audience and assemble the right elements from your toolkit, the more successful your designs will be. The same applies for understanding the purpose, the visualization, and the types of data being used. Good visualization design means effective communication with your audience. It helps to think about the interests, needs, skills, and knowledge, and goals of the people who will be engaging with your visualizations. There are a few fundamental questions to keep in mind at the outset, including, one, what are the interests, needs, and goals of your target audience that your visualization can address in some way? For example, this can range from general curiosity about an issue such as the relationship of life expectancies and personal income levels in different parts of the world. To a specific need such as seeing a real time alert about a potential hacker intrusion to a network. Two, what is the audiences expected level of familiarity and subject matter expertise with the material? The level of prior knowledge and expectations can have a big impact on how they view your visualization. Prior knowledge can sometimes help, and other times hinder, the ability and usability of your design. We will examine the role of prior knowledge, mental models, and bias further in a future lesson. Three, what is the appropriate level of information density and detail that will fit with your target audience's subject matter knowledge and needs? Realize that providing too much, or too little, detail can sometimes be counterproductive, depending on who's looking at the visualization. Four, how much or how little control do users have in interacting with visualization? A potential trade-off here is that control can require more effort and knowledge from the user. You should recognize that simplicity can be relative for different types of users. If for example, your design in meant for retail analysts, they may need a tool that can help them uncover meaningful patterns and trends in data. In this instance, the emphasis is on facilitating the process of exploration. If on the other hand, the user is a sales person presenting quarterly returns to executives, the goal is for the presentation to convey specific relevant information as concisely as possible. It's also important to think about the level of detail and scope of information that different audiences may need. In the case of the analyst, she may need the ability to easily view data in various time scales from say, days to years, whereas a salesperson may only need to show quarterly results. These factors can all help guide your design strategy. One common technique for keeping different kinds of audiences clearly in mind is by using what I refer to as personas. These are descriptions of user types that capture characteristics, goals, and needs of different types of users. For example, there can be a persona that represents a retail analyst, and another that represents a salesperson. While personas may not be useful for every design project, they can provide useful summaries of important types of people that can help sharpen your thinking about targeted design. As we have seen, great data visualizations are designed with the needs of their intended audience at the forefront. There are many considerations that can guide your design choices when aiming for that target audience. We have touched on some important considerations in this lesson. It's all about asking good questions at the outset. Now the direction of a design may change and evolve over time, but the good questions at the outset can result in great results at the end. Creating a persona document can be a useful exercise and adjunct for capturing the needs of your audiences. The more you can understand and anticipate those needs, and draw from your data visualization toolkit, the better off you're going to be. See you next time.
