When creating charts for “everyday” reports and presentations, it's generally best to stick to chart types that you know are familiar to the audience. Sometimes, though, you can’t use a familiar chart type, either because there aren’t any familiar charts that can accurately represent the type of data to be shown, or because there aren’t any that can communicate the specific insights that you need to communicate about the data.

In these situations, you might have to use a chart type that you know is unfamiliar to the audience. For example, you might have to use a scatterplot or step chart, even though you suspect (or know) that the audience is unfamiliar with that chart type. What to do?

There are three techniques that I use to quickly teach audiences how to read an unfamiliar chart type:

1. Gentle reveal

2. Bait-and-switch

3. Duh insights

What, exactly, are these techniques? Let’s see some examples, starting with…