{"id":1346,"date":"2020-11-17T14:34:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T13:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedatastory.nl\/?p=1346"},"modified":"2025-09-18T15:31:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T13:31:15","slug":"data-visualization-a-mental-breakdown-on-how-we-perceive-data-1-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedatastory.nl\/en\/data-stories\/data-services\/dashboard\/data-visualization-a-mental-breakdown-on-how-we-perceive-data-1-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Visualization: a (mental) breakdown on how we perceive data 1\/5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data Visualization: a (mental) breakdown on how we perceive data 1\/5<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At The Data Story we pay a lot of attention to how we present data as it is quite a challenge to communicate data effectively. Imagine you have found an extraordinary insight. To you as an analyst the conclusions are crystal clear from the data, but your team or the stakeholders just can\u2019t seem to see it. This is, among other things, caused by how each individual thinks and processes new information. As an analyst you might miss a few steps in getting the message across, as you are familiar with data, logical thinking and your way of working is structured around coding, schema\u2019s and data frames. To overcome these pitfalls we have a set of principles and tricks that we use or check before we finalize a visualization. We think that everyone from the management level to the delivery guy or maintenance service, each single person should be able to understand and work with data. One element that you should take into account is the way our brain defaults on how we perceive and process things. The advantage is that they are (mostly) the same with every person, so this can be widely used. In this and a few upcoming blogs we\u2019ll cover a couple of these points. As a starting point we will look at Gestalt, which focuses on how we perceive patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gestalt
<\/strong>We as humans have an evolved brain. Although we have adapted to living with our brains that can make swift and balanced decisions (or at least we think we can), the defaults still date back to our \u201csurvival mode\u201d that was set at the time we lived in the wild. This relates to how we perceive data as well. Instead of seeing individual points we are wired to see patterns and groups, this idea was extensively researched by Gestalt Psychologists in the beginning of the 20th centrury. They proposed a set of principle, the so-called \u201cGestalt Principles\u201d, you can read more on them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five we use the most, are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n