I write books.
My practical, accessible, immediately useful books show you how to make slides, reports, dashboards, and graphs that look just as pro as you are.
Check your Charts!
I have pulled together research-based design guidelines for data visualizations. Use this interactive guide to rate your visualizations and spot places to improve your work and impress your audiences with clarity and insight.
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My oldest friend interviewed me on her podcast, where we did not talk about #dataviz at all. We talked about the art of jumping in. Don't wait for excellent. Go at good enough. twitter.com/MrsCford_tweet…
The Dashboard Sketch Process
"I vote no." This short answer speeds up the dashboard development process significantly. And I developed the question my client voted on in roughly 3 minutes, by showing her a quick sketch of some possible graph options. My client is in charge of a dashboard that...
Everyone’s Opinions About Your Dashboard
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 managing...
Data Fortune Tellers
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...
You Gotta Have An Equidistant Axis
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 graph,...