Visual language
This page will serve as guidance for visual language used in the ursa-major project. The aim is to provide a set of rules and guidelines to follow when creating new visualisations.
- Complement the graph with a tables, so it can be easily read by screen reader users. If this is done, add alt text to the chart, which describes how they might switch to a tabular view of the data.1
- Label data directly rather than using legends. This is helpful for users who may have color blindesses. 2
- The following selection of colours are distinguishable for people with all types of colour blindnesses.3
- The number one rule, and starting point: What questions do you want the visualisation to answer
- Tooltips should show optional information
- Use horizontal bar charts if there are long labels. 4
- For line charts: max three lines per chart
- Grid lines assist in visualising where the data corresponds on each axis
- Use visualisations that are responsive on all devices. Often it can help to have various static visualisations for different device sizes. 5
Image below sourced from Taras Bakusevych article on Ux Planet
