decision_checklist.qmd

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title: "Decisionmaking checklist"
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When you're planning out your own work, it's important to make conscious decisions about what you're doing and why. I keep saying this, but one of the things I dislike the most about no-code visualization products like Excel or Tableau is that they encourage you to *not* make these decisions, but to just rely on defaults or automated suggestions.

In contrast to just going with defaults, you as a thoughtful visualization practitioner should go through the decisions you *could* make in order to determine what decisions you *should* make. This is something you do in your EDA process, as well as in sketching charts on paper.

It's also useful for understanding a chart someone else made, whether just to read it, or to revise or critique it.

## Checklist

What decisions could be / should be / were made about...

* what data to include
* what data to exclude
* what visual encodings to use
* what types of scales to use (sequential, qualitative, diverging)
* what to put on the x- and y-axes
* how to scale the x- and y-axes
* how to use color
* how to use text
* how to use annotations
* where to draw attention
* what conclusion to suggest

What have I forgotten from this list?