When we’re forced to spend our cognitive resources processing inefficient visuals, we have less in the budget for critical business decisions or strategic thought. But with some psychology and thoughtful design choices, we can stop wasting cognitive resources and improve the cognitive return on investment. That is, we can allow our brain to spend energy on the “so what” of the chart rather than on the “what."

Picture this: It’s been a week filled with plenty of surprises as you prepare for your meeting with the CFO to discuss economic factors that may be influencing cash flow. You open a new email from your team titled “IRS Refund Trends” to see:

Your already low energy level takes a dive, and your other preparations come to a halt as you struggle to understand the knowledge buried in this image before time runs out.

The scenario above demonstrates the impact visuals have on our limited cognitive resources. Cognition describes our brain’s processes of collecting and creating knowledge from information. Things like stress and problem-solving consume our cognitive energy budget while activities like rest and relaxation replenish it.

Visual Elements That Impact Cognition

Pre-attentive processing refers to the brain’s ability to notice some visual elements without conscious effort. Intentional use of this subconscious processing ability when designing visuals gives a high return for very little cognitive effort.

The three pre-attentive categories that are relevant to data visualization are form, spatial position and color.

Form

Form includes shape, size, length and orientation. Within this category, we typically have limited design choices in the visual presentation of data. We might use a shape as a signifier of grouping or visually divide a graph with trend lines or thresholds. Larger or longer elements draw more attention, which can be useful in titles, axes, and other labels.

Spatial Position

Spatial position refers to the relative position or location of objects within a visual. It can be used as a design choice for the locations of the title, legend, other non-data elements or, when multiple visualizations are present, entire visualizations.

Data points positioned close together are easily seen as related while lone points further from the group stand out. While the values control how close points are to one another, there are ways we can intentionally use spatial position. Adding a distinct line or other shape can allow points to be perceived relative to that object and other points. Trying to communicate a value is above or below a target amount? Put the value literally above or below a target line and your audience will easily recognize that relative position.

Color

Color encompasses hue, saturation and brightness. It is one of the primary tools we have available with automatic processing and is not dependent on underlying data. We can use color to draw attention to or away from specific data points, to tie together elements within and even across visuals, and to show intensity or divergence.

Bright and saturated colors naturally draw more attention than muted or dull colors and perform better when used for emphasis. However, these colors need to be used sparingly for greater impact. For example, a single blue dot in a field of gray dots stands out, but a single blue dot surrounded by multiple dots of varying colors does not.

When using color for emphasis, be mindful that some of your audience may have color blindness. A meta-analysis by Jennifer Birch published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America found that about one in 12 men and one in 200 women have a red-green color vision deficiency, affecting their ability to differentiate between these colors. Avoiding red and green combinations or intentionally varying the saturation can help maintain distinctions. Additionally, color blindness simulators are available online to help check the accessibility of the color palette you are using.

We can also help our audience with categorical information by using colors to group or link information. For instance, to group date properties, you might make weekdays blue, weekends green and holidays orange. Using natural color associations from your organization for certain categories can reduce cognitive costs, but if no natural associations exist, you can establish color associations for frequently used categories. Broad and consistent usage of color-to-category relationships can build continuity across visualizations and compound your cognitive returns.

In addition, varying the saturation of one color or transitioning along a pattern of colors can give subconscious information to the audience. Examples of this include heatmaps and weather radar visuals. When using these gradients, consider the focal point of the message and remember that bright or highly saturated colors will be stronger at drawing attention. On a visual with multiple overlapping lines, using a single color and adjusting the transparency will typically generate an output where the overlapping segments have a deeper saturation, which draws attention to overlapping areas rather than individual lines.

Putting It All Together

There is no easy answer to all our communications, but we can use the principles discussed to increase the cognitive return on the investment. Tailoring the communication for the audience is where the finance professional can add value. We must spend some cognitive resources upfront to understand the primary concerns or the business questions being asked.

Going back to the scenario at the beginning, for the meeting, the CFO has expressed concern primarily with economic factors for the year to date versus the prior year and secondarily with how those factors are trending versus historical years.

Applying visual cognition principles, we can use form elements to make our year-over-year visualization larger and highlight the length difference between the two years. For an English-speaking audience, we’ll use spatial position by placing our primary visual on the left and our important data point at the top. Following standard practice for time series, we’ll also plot the earliest period on the left. We’ll keep our primary trend line in the foreground for emphasis.

We’ll use color by saturating our desired focal point to increase attention, using consistent colors to link the years across visualizations, and subduing secondary information like week labels and years before 2024 with lighter colors and transparency.

The result? The reader gathers the necessary information from the update significantly quicker this time. The efficient transfer of information leaves more cognitive resources available to determine how to use the information instead of gathering the information.

Attention is a highly valuable resource for knowledge workers. Keeping our visualizations efficient lowers the cognitive cost for our audience.

Are we being good stewards of our audience’s cognitive budget when designing visualizations? Which dashboards and reports do you have with a low cognitive return on investment? What’s an easy visualization edit you can make this week?