by Stephanie Evergreen | Aug 21, 2019 | Uncategorized
The primary struggle with dashboard development is not identifying the right key performance indicators, building the graphs in your favorite software, or even getting people excited about the idea of using a dashboard. That’s all a cake walk compared to...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Aug 7, 2019 | Uncategorized
Pick a color, any color. You know how this game goes. You pick a color, your friend opens and closes the fortune teller, spelling out the name of the color you selected. You pick a number from the visible choices, your friend opens and closes the fortune teller, until...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Jul 24, 2019 | Uncategorized
Here’s the thing: The scale used on each axis must have equal intervals. It’s an easy mistake to make. Excel automatically spaces your intervals and labels equidistant from one another but it is assuming that your intervals actually are equidistant. In this...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Jul 10, 2019 | Uncategorized
So, hey, heads up: The Chart Starter Series is probably not for you. If you know my work well, you are probably already a dataviz whiz. The Chart Starter Series is for your colleague. You know the one. The one who keeps asking you to make their graphs. Tell them about...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Jun 26, 2019 | Uncategorized
I’m guessing that 90% of the people who search on “Harvey Balls” and end up on this blog post are not here for the same reason I’m here. I’m here to talk to you about qualitative data. And this one can be a little NSFW. Harvey Balls are an unfortunately named set of...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Jun 12, 2019 | Uncategorized
Data visualization workshops are an investment into your growth as a leader in your field. They should, if they are good, produce immediate returns on your investment which should show up as significantly increased use of your work, attention from existing and...
by Stephanie Evergreen | May 30, 2019 | Uncategorized
This graph type goes by a lot of names: isotype chart, pictograph, or pictogram. Whichever way, it allows us to use symbols rather than stick with the squares that make up the waffle chart. And it is especially well suited to representing small counts of things that...
by Stephanie Evergreen | May 15, 2019 | Uncategorized
Some might claim they look at a blank PowerPoint slide and see a source of hope and possibility, similar to how artists supposedly see inspiration in a blank canvas. I call bullshit on this. Artists did not just walk up to a blank canvas and envision their end...
by Stephanie Evergreen | May 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
Here’s how to make them more effective. Diagrams come in many different flavors – mind maps, concept maps, flow charts, and so on – but at the core, they are all visualizations of how themes relate to one another. As ubiquitous as diagrams are, they have some...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Apr 17, 2019 | Uncategorized
When Jenny Lyons and I were pulling together the revised chapter on Qualitative Visualization in Effective Data Visualization, 2nd edition, we ended up ditching this section on dendrograms. In the list of most-likely-to-use qualitative visuals, this one is probably...
