1. Who | Who is your audience? How expert will they be about the subject and/or display conventions?


The information and meaning any particular visualization communicates depends on its viewer. A physicist looking quickly at genomicist's graphic may be mystified, even though both scientists are “experts” in their own fields. A graphic that would satisfy an expert may or may not be appropriate for broader audiences. And, a graphic intended to explain sometimes can look very different from one intended to allow for deep exploration of data and information (Figure 1). As in other forms of communication, considering the range of expertise and interests in the audience (viewers, in this case) is paramount (e.g., Çöltekin, Fabrikant, & Lacayo, 2010). Typically, scientists err on the side of assuming too much expertise for any particular audience. Jargon is used in labels and captions, and details concerning context and metadata are omitted from the figure, and often also from a caption. In general, any audience will prefer a figure that requires the least amount of explanation outside the boundaries of the figure (e.g., Russo et al., 2014), but that does not mean that excessive “keys” or labeling are always a good idea.

[Figure 1 here]