Using Visuals in Technical Reports
Technical documents rely heavily on visual elements as well as on text. Text usually comes before visuals in technical presentation, but visuals should be placed close to the text that refers to them. Different kinds of information are best presented in different kinds of visuals. The following visuals are rough examples.
| Bar Charts| Line Graphs| Pie Charts| Photographs| Drawings| Flow Charts| Tables|
Bar Charts
Bar charts show
comparison and contrast among competitors.
Line Graphs
Line charts show
trends.
Pie Charts
Pie charts show
percentages of a whole.
Photographs
Photographs give an
exact representation. Such a presentation is sometimes needed in instructions
or in promotional material.
Drawings
Like photographs, drawings show realistic views of an
object. What they lack in perfect representation, they make up in their ability
to emphasize. A drawing need not include all of the details, and so unimportant
and distracting details can be left out. Furthermore, drawings are more easily
manipulated so that you can create exploded drawings (good for assembly
instructions) or cross cut drawings.
Organizational and Flow Charts
Organizational charts show the static structure of an
organization or of anything that is in the structure of a hierarchy (a concept,
for example). Flow charts show the sequence of steps or of movements, for
instance the sub routines in a computer program or the direction and sequence
of fluid flows in a chemical engineering design.
Tables
Tables consist of columns (vertical lines of data cells) and
rows (horizontal lines of data cells). They have column titles and row titles.
They are good for presenting a large quantity of numerical data, and they
usually show comparison and contrast relationships, but not always.
|
Table 1: Example of a Table |
||||
|
|
Column 1 |
Column 2 |
Column 3 |
Column 4 |
|
Row 1 |
data |
data |
data |
data |
|
Row 2 |
data |
data |
data |
data |
|
Row 3 |
data |
data |
data |
data |
|
Row 4 |
data |
data |
data |
data |