When Visualization Best Practices Fall O...

Data Visualization enthusiasts have, by now, listened to a lot of experts and read a million books which teach the importance of using the right visual encodings for effective user perception. These techniques or best practices are often backed by scientific research. But, what if your customer asks for something, that's exactly from the "dont's" section of your visualization rulebook? What often goes unaccounted for, is that the audience of these dashboards are neither necessarily trained in data visualization, nor are they even aware of the close-knit data visualization community active on social media. And, that's very natural. The audience of your dashboards are often business domain experts, who have much broader problems to solve, than to educate themselves about good data visualization techniques. So, what happens when your "Visualization Gyan" falls on deaf ears? Do you build something that your "audience wants" ? Or, do you decide to use your engineering excellence to to give them "what's right"?