4.2 Compiling your own infographics – evaluation checklist
In the following activity you will explore Data + Design [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (Infoactive and Donald W. Reynolds Institute, n.d.) – a Creative Commons-licensed, downloadable, remixable and shareable online textbook that is a great resource for advice on creating and evaluating infographics and data visualisations. It is a collaborative work written by more than 50 authors and includes chapters by the aforementioned Alberto Cairo.
Activity 2 Creating effective visualisations
Read Chapter 17 ‘Perception deception’ (Djukic, n.d., pp. 217–40) and Chapter 18 ‘Common visualization mistakes’ (Chang et al., pp. 242–61) of Data + Design. These chapters can be found in the ‘Visualising data’ section of the book.
As you read, note:
- some of the ways in which an infographic can be made more impactful
- common errors to watch out for when consuming and preparing infographics and data visualisations.
In the next activity you’ll draw on your reading of Data + Design to compile a checklist to use when evaluating the accuracy and effectiveness of infographics and data visualisations.
Activity 3 Devising your checklist
Spend about 30 minutes devising your own infographics–evaluation checklist. Base it on the notes you made for Activity 2, and on your reading of the resources already mentioned. Do feel free to include additional criteria of your own.
Feedback
You should now have a useful checklist to use when evaluating any infographics you encounter, and when creating your own. If you’d like to read more about the design principles applied to creating infographics, Kibar and Akkoyunlu’s paper ‘Fostering and assessing infographic design for learning: the development of infographic design criteria’ is a good place to start.
In the next activity you’ll use the checklist you produced in Activity 3 as the basis for evaluating an infographic of your choice.