Recently, I encountered a visual created using Power BI’s default color theme that made me take a second look — for the wrong reason.
I created an alternate visual that shows the same issue I noticed straightaway. Does anything quickly stand out?
The default Power BI color theme assigns green, then black, then red in sequence. Sometimes, your data does not line up with how your audience might interpret colors. In western culture, we tend to equate green with good/positive and red with bad/negative. In this case, conveying sentiment using the default Power BI theme could cause a lot of confusion if people focus on the color without taking time to read labels carefully. This reversal may even cause someone to make the opposite decision they otherwise would if the colors corresponded with the labels.
Going even further, is color even needed to show that Positive has the highest value and far outweighs Negative? Would a single color work for all three categories?
Every detail counts.