Why this matters
A good chart lets a busy reader see the answer in seconds. A bad chart confuses them or, worse, misleads them. Visualisation is named in many analyst and M&E adverts, and your charts will often be the only part of a report a manager actually looks at.
Match the chart to the question
- Comparing categories (sales by item, enrolment by school): use a bar chart. Horizontal bars work well on phones when category names are long.
- Change over time (monthly attendance, weekly sales): use a line chart, with time running left to right.
- Part of a whole (share of households by water source): a bar chart usually works better than a pie chart, because people compare lengths more accurately than angles. If you use a pie, keep it to a few slices.
- Relationship between two numbers (farm size and harvest): use a scatter plot, one dot per record.
- Exact values that people need to look up: use a table, not a chart.
Make it readable on a small screen
Many of your readers will open your report on a phone.