65 Kellogg Insight Interestingly, the same principle applies for word clouds—an increasingly common way of displaying textual data. It’s tough to find the common themes on the left, but it’s an easy task when you clump up the related words for easy comparison. 6. Give your visualization a test run. Or three. Still, there are a lot of factors that go into how we process visualizations. Even professional designers can’t always predict how a visualization will be read. This is why it’s critical to use test runs. If you have a relatively simple data set, create three or four different visu - alizations. “Make them as different as possible,” he says. “Show those to some colleagues. Ask them what story they see in each one. You’ll be sur - prised at the differences in what people extract from the same data, plot - ted in different ways.” Those interpretations can then be used to shape your final product. With a more complex data set, keep in mind that your viewers can quickly get overwhelmed even if you and your designer understand the visual - ization completely. Because the visual-processing centers in our brains Based on insights from Steve Franconeri Credit: Marti Hearst