My brother-in-law told me to add patterns to my pie chart wedges, and I thought he was nuts.

Turns out, when I showed my draft to a friend with red-green color vision stuff, he said it was the only chart he'd ever seen that made sense on the first look. What's a simple pattern you've added that helped a ton?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_logan1mo ago

That "red-green color vision stuff" is a real chart killer. I used to just cross-hatch different sections, which made my reports look like they were trying to be pirate treasure maps. Simple dots and stripes work way better, and now I feel bad for every confusing chart I ever sent out.

schmidt.kim1mo ago

My friend's boss had to redo a whole project because the charts were useless to half the team. They used red and green lines that just blurred together for some folks. Now they always check for color blindness first, which seems obvious after the fact.

theamason19d ago

I mean, "pirate treasure maps" is a funny way to put it. But is it really that big of a deal? Most people can still tell the lines apart by where they are on the chart or the labels. It feels like we're making a huge fuss over something that gets fixed in two seconds. I've seen way worse problems with data being just plain wrong. That seems more serious than some colors blending a bit.