Visualization Best Practices and Style Guide

Guiding Principles

Clear and Defined Objective and Audience

• Objective: A chart should have a single, clearly defined objective. Visualizations with one focused purpose are easier to understand, while those with multiple or unclear goals can confuse the viewer.  Ask yourself: What question am I answering, or what story am I telling?

• Audience: Know your audience. What is their familiarity with the subject? What is their level of data and graph literacy?

Tell a Story

• Add context: Guide your audience by using clear headings, annotations, and explanations that highlight key insights. Context helps the viewer interpret the data and makes your visualization more engaging and memorable.

• Understand your data: To tell a compelling (and truthful) story, you must deeply understand your data. Use visualization techniques to explore and uncover patterns, outliers, or hidden relationships. Avoid searching only for evidence that supports a predetermined argument; instead, approach the data with curiosity and allow the insights to emerge through honest exploration.

Design with a Purpose

• Focus on what matters

  • Maximize information while minimizing non-data elements. Remove visual clutter — such as unnecessary labels, decorations, or axes — while maintaining clarity and readability. Every design choice should serve the goal of enhancing understanding, not distracting from it.

• Use Color with Intention

  • Color influences clarity, credibility, and engagement — use it with care. Begin with neutral tones to test your message, then introduce color purposefully to emphasize meaning. Limit the number of hues, rely on variations in shade or saturation, and ensure accessibility for those with color vision deficiencies.

• Balance Simplicity and Detail

  • Visualizing complex topics requires thoughtful judgment. Include the right amount of data to support your story: sometimes a simple summary chart is most effective, while in other cases, more detailed views can reveal important nuances, outliers, or trends. Strive for a balance that informs without overwhelming.

How to Design a Chart 

The design and structure of a visualization should align with its primary function — presentation, operational, or exploratory. Its primary function should align with the defined objective and audience. Each type serves a distinct role within the life cycle of data visualization and communication.

Presentation

• Feature high-level metrics with clear indicators of trends in the underlying data.
• Include simple charts that are easy to interpret at a glance.
• Emphasize clarity and visual storytelling — ideal for communicating insights to broad or executive audiences.

Operational

• Designed to answer predefined questions or support ongoing monitoring tasks.
• Often rely on real-time or frequently updated data.
• May use additional colors beyond the brand palette when necessary for clarity — apply discretion and follow accessibility and design best practices.
• Prioritize consistency, speed of interpretation, and functional clarity over decorative design.

Exploratory

• Used to investigate data, discover trends, and surface key findings before formal reporting.
• Commonly used by smaller, analytical teams or individuals prior to sharing results broadly.
• May require additional colors or visual elements to highlight patterns during discovery — use these judiciously and maintain readability.
• Serve as a bridge between raw analysis and presentation, helping uncover the “story” the data wants to tell.

Style Guide and Accessibility

Full Brand Guidelines 

• University Branding

• Typography

• Colors

• Graphic Elements

• Icon usage 

• Accessibility 

  • Color Grid 
  • Alt Text 

Full Accessibility Guide 

Analyst Guide 

Steps to Create a Visualization 

1. Define Audience and Objective 
2. Choose the Right Chart 
3. Understand and Prepare your Data 
   1. Consider Outliers 
4. Build Your Dashboards 
5. Refine Elements 
6. Check for Accessibility/Accuracy 
7. Review, Test, and Iterate 
   1. Collaborate with others for feedback 

Checklist 

1. Verified Data Source 
2. Dashboard Contains all Required Elements 
   1. Office/University Logo 
   2. TXST Brand Guidelines Followed (Font, colors, and text)
   3. Meets Accessibility Standards 
   4. Time stamp of when the data was last updated
3. Documentation 
   1. Data sources noted, data terms refined, refresh schedule noted (Could be a copy/paste of the notes/details tab) 
   2. Location Saved (ex. share drive path) 
   3. Confluence Page created 
   4. CatStats Specific (DAIR Analysts Only) 
      1. Proper Title & Folder Placement
      2. Description Filled Out
      3. Tags Added 
         1. Insert List of Tags
      4. Permissions (if needed)
         1. If additional permissions are needed for users of report (ex. QA reports), list the users here. 
   5. Data Governance team notified (Team will serve as final approvers and ensure checklist is completed before dashboard/report is shared with other. Upon approval, any permissions that need to be granted to users will be done by Data Governance team.)