Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 15.3.3. Clarity matters To be effective, a reader looking at a graphic for the first time should be able to sum up the main message in a few words or short sentences. Accordingly, it is important that all the relevant pieces of information that he or she needs to understand the graphic are clearly labelled and that different presentation elements (e.g. colours, layout, fonts) do not distract the person’s attention from the key message. It is also important to avoid imagery or design that could be exclusionary or stereotyping; for example, representing the category of ‘women’ through a figure wearing a dress, the colour pink or two ‘x’ chromosomes, or representing gender as a simple binary. 15.4. IN PRACTICE: INCORPORATING VISUALIZATION INTO YOUR REPORT A good starting point for deciding what forms of visualization to include in your report is to brainstorm the following questions: Who is the intended audience? (see Chapter 16 for further guidance on this question) and what do we want to say to them? This will help you to identify those issues or ideas that your audience would be interested to know more about. Once you have some ideas for your graphics, go back to the spreadsheets that you analysed in your research (see Chapter 8) and experiment with the data to see what options are possible. If you have ideas that you are not able to create yourself, consult with colleagues or a professional graphic designer. Remember to avoid any exclusionary or gender-stereotyping imagery. Data visualization can be added to your report wherever you want to emphasize a particular finding of your research. There is no set number of visualizations that should be included in a report. It will depend entirely on the data that you want to show. As discussed in Chapter 17, data visualization can also be incorporated into additional advocacy materials. UPDATE FROM AHN Ahn works with her NHRI’s communications department to design graphics that highlight some of the most powerful data she has found in her research. For example, she makes: • A line graph comparing her country’s maternal mortality rate to neighboring countries, and showing how it had changed over time • A bar graph comparing the maternal mortality ratios of indigenous and nonindigenous women in the country • A map of the country showing the different percentage of births assisted by skilled attendants, disaggregated by region • A scatter plot showing the correlations between health spending by region and number of emergency obstetric care services available, by region • A pie chart showing the amount of money allocated to the health sector that remains unspent. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling [VIDEO], available at http://bcove.me/9ods7inw Lankow, J., Ritchie, J. and Crooks, R. (2012), The Power of Infographics Tactical Tech (2013), Visualising Information for Advocacy 152