Most bad charts start with a chart type someone liked. Good ones start with a sentence: "Revenue grew every month except August." "The North sells twice as much as the South." That sentence is the goal, and step 2 of Chart Compass asks for it.
Write the takeaway first
Before you press anything, say in one sentence what the reader should take away. Then find the goal that sentence belongs to. If you cannot write the sentence, you do not need a chart yet; you need to look at the data first, and a table does that best.
The eleven goals
| Goal | It answers | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Compare | How do items or groups stack up? | Which region sold most? |
| Change over time | How did it move? | Monthly revenue, a trend, a season |
| Part of a whole | What is the total made of? | Share by channel, the mix of a budget |
| Distribution | How do values spread out? | Ages of customers, delivery times |
| Relationship | Do two measures move together, or who is linked to whom? | Does more ad spend bring more revenue? |
| Ranking | What is first and what is last? | Top 10 products |
| Against a target | Are we on plan? | Budget against actual |
| Flow and process | What happens step by step, or what moves where? | A sales funnel, a profit bridge, a project plan |
| One number | Where are we right now? | Total revenue this month |
| Places | Where is it? | Sales by country or state |
| Exact values | What exactly is the number? | A list to scan, export or drill into |
Point at any goal in the app to see its question and examples.
The dot: goals that fit your data
After you bring data, some goals carry a small dot. Chart Compass looked at your columns and found that these goals suit them best. With Monthly sales (a date and two numbers), the dots are on Change over time and Against a target. With Customer ages (240 numbers), the dot is on Distribution.
The dot is a hint, not a rule. If your sentence is about something else, pick the goal for your sentence.
Greyed-out goals, and why
Some goals cannot be answered from your data, and they are greyed out. Point at one to read what is missing. With Revenue by channel (five channels and their revenue):
| Goal | Why it is greyed out |
|---|---|
| Change over time | Needs a date or period column |
| Distribution | Needs a number with at least 12 values |
| Relationship | Needs two number columns, or a from and a to column |
| Against a target | Needs a category and two numbers (actual and target) |
| Places | Needs a column of places (country, region, city) |
A goal can also open without a number. A plan with a start and an end date per task opens Change over time and Flow and process (for a Gantt chart), and a from and a to column, like people moving between teams, opens Flow and process and Relationship (for a Sankey diagram or a network).
This is useful in itself. If your manager wants to see "revenue against target by channel", the greyed-out goal tells you the target column is missing before you build anything.
Goals that look alike
Three pairs are easy to mix up:
- Compare or Ranking: compare when the order does not matter (regions in a fixed order), rank when it does (best to worst).
- Part of a whole or Compare: part of a whole only when the parts add up to a meaningful total. Market share does; the sales of five unrelated stores usually do not.
- One number or Against a target: one number when the reader needs the value, against a target when they need to know whether it is good.
The next lesson answers the questions that follow the goal.