Interactive infographic maker: paste your data, get charts readers can explore
An interactive infographic earns its interactivity when readers have a real question to ask of the data: how does my region compare, what happened in my year, which group changed most. As an interactive infographic maker, Anticode can turn a dataset you paste in into charts with filters, tooltips and a written takeaway. The data is frozen into the app when it's built, because nothing live can load inside it.
Decide the one thing it should show
Interactive charts tempt you to show everything and let readers find the story. Most won't. Write the headline finding as a sentence first ("Cycling to work doubled in three of our eight towns, and fell in one"), then design the default view to show exactly that. Filters and hover details are for the readers who want to check their own corner of it.
Matching the chart to the data
| The reader asks | Chart | Interaction worth adding |
|---|---|---|
| How has it changed over time? | Line chart | Hover for exact values; toggle series on and off |
| Which is biggest? | Sorted horizontal bar chart | Filter by group; re-sort on click |
| What share does each part take? | Stacked bar (or a pie with five slices or fewer) | Hover for percentages |
| Is there a relationship? | Scatter plot | Highlight one point by name; filter by category |
| Where is it happening? | A simple drawn map or a table by region | Click a region for its figures |
Keep the colours meaningful. One highlight colour for the thing the headline is about, neutrals for the rest, and the same colour meaning the same thing on every chart.
Preparing the dataset
- Clean columns. One row per observation, one column per variable, consistent units, no merged cells. Paste it as CSV or a table.
- Name the source and date. "Council travel survey, 2025" belongs under the chart, and you should only publish data you have the right to share.
- Check the size. A few thousand rows is comfortable in a page. Aggregate very large datasets to the level readers need before you paste them.
- Personal data. Don't paste anything that identifies individuals. The data ships inside a public page.
How to describe it
Paste the data and say what readers should get from it: "An interactive infographic from this CSV of commuting modes by town and year, 2015 to 2025. The headline: cycling doubled in Ashby, Wren and Hale, and fell in Lowford. Default view: a line chart of cycling share per town with those four highlighted. A town filter, a mode switch (cycling, walking, bus, car), hover for exact percentages, and a sorted bar chart for any chosen year. Source line under each chart."
Anticode writes it as one app, with the charts drawn in code (SVG or canvas) and the dataset embedded. Check every number you can against the source: the top value, the bottom value, one value in the middle, and the totals. Charts are persuasive, and an error in one point undermines the rest.
Accessibility
Not everyone can hover or see colour differences. Ask for every chart to have a short written summary, tooltips that also open on tap and keyboard focus, labels directly on lines rather than only in a legend, and a "show as table" option for each chart. Anticode's design gate checks published apps for basics such as visible keyboard focus and reduced-motion support, but whether a chart makes sense without sight is something you test.
The data is a snapshot
Anticode apps run in a sandbox with no network. That has clear consequences for data visualisation:
- No live data. It can't fetch from an API, a spreadsheet, a database or a statistics office. To update the figures, paste the new data as a change request and publish again.
- Say when it was frozen. Put "Data to March 2026" near the headline so nobody mistakes it for live figures.
- No online map tiles. Map backgrounds from mapping services can't load; regions are drawn in code or come from an image you upload. See the interactive map maker.
- No embedding elsewhere. It runs as its own published page you link to; it can't be dropped into another site as a widget.
For a story told over several scrolling steps, see the interactive story maker. For a private dashboard you update yourself, the budget tracker shows a different pattern.
Questions people ask
Can readers download the data behind the charts?
Ask for a download button for the dataset as CSV and test that it saves correctly in a few browsers.
Can I update the numbers myself later?
Paste the updated dataset as a change request, check the result and publish. Older versions stay in version history.
Will it work on a phone?
Ask for charts that resize to phone width, with fewer labels and tap-to-see values, and test them in the preview at phone size.