10 considerations before you create another chart about COVID-19

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Author: Amanda Makulec.

Editor’s note: Amanda Makulec is joining as an advisor to the Coronavirus Data Resource Hub. As both a Masters of Public Health and the Operations Director for the Data Visualization Society, she’s an expert in the responsible use of data visualization for public health. She will be helping the Tableau team identify data resources, curate visualizations, and ensure that what is available through the hub is of the highest quality and consistent with responsible information sharing during a critical time. Follow her at @abmakulec and on The Nightengale, the journal of DVS.

Teams are making ready-to-use COVID-19 datasets easily accessible for the wider data visualization and analysis community. Johns Hopkins posts frequently updated data on their github page, and Tableau has created a COVID-19 Resource Hub with the same data reshaped for use in Tableau.

These public assets are immensely helpful for public health professionals and authorities responding to the epidemic. They make data from multiple sources easy to use, which can enable quick development of visualizations of local case numbers and impact.

At the same time, the stakes are high around how we communicate about this epidemic to the wider public. Visualizations are powerful for communicating information, but can also mislead, misinform, and—in the worst cases—incite panic. We are in the middle of complete information overload, with hourly case updates and endless streams of information.

As a public health professional, might I ask:

“Please consider if what you’ve created serves an actual information need in the public domain. Does it add value to the public and uncover new information? If not, perhaps this is one viz that should be for your own use only.”

We want to help flatten the curve to minimize strain on our health system. The best way to do that is to take individual actions to slow the speed of transmission—like washing your hands and self-quarantining if exposed—and amplifying the voices of experts.

If, after reading all of these caveats and warnings about the harm and panic that can be caused by misleading visualizations, you’ve decided to explore and visualize data about COVID-19, here are ten considerations for your design process.