9 Troubleshooting

In this final chapter, we’re going to talk about what to do when things go wrong, when the cow manure hits the combine blades. We’ll talk about what to do when there are a few holes in your data, when there are more holes than data points, and how to report on data that doesn’t even exist yet. Then we’ll discuss what to do when your client or stakeholder asks you to go against your intuition for visualization and design. Finally, we’ll wrap up by going over some reasons why a project’s finish line might be continuously getting farther away instead of closer, and how to manage each.

It’s the last chapter, and you’ve made it so far—push on with me just a little further to the finish line. So, let’s jump into missing data!

9.1 How to handle missing data

In the chapter about interactivity, we talked about treating your users to well-crafted error messages in the event that they are suddenly faced with no data, either because they filtered it all out or because there was an issue in the underlying data source. Now, we’re going to talk about two other cases where you might need to deal with missing data: missing data points and not-yet-existent data.

9.1.1 Missing data points

9.1.2 Not-yet-existent data

9.2 What to do when you’re asked to ignore your viz-tuition

9.2.1 When asked to visualize a zillion categories in color

9.2.2 When asked to use someone else’s suboptimal design

9.3 Dealing with scope-creep and the never-ending project

9.3.1 Requirements gathering wasn’t thorough enough

9.3.2 Too many or not enough cooks in the kitchen

9.3.3 You’re trying too hard

9.4 The last word

Summary