This is not news. Today. Yesterday. Every day. I fail all the time. Last week I was playing games that pay real money and failed to get anything out of them. This week, I have so many data visualization fails that I’m already planning a conference talk called The…
This is my last personal annual report. I’ll tell you why. This year most of my metrics went down. At first, due to cultural conditioning that says “more is always better,” I was like Oh no! Before I go further, let’s pause and break that down. I’ve been creating…
The most frustrating part of attending one of my workshops is that you learn so many awesome ways of communicating data, you learn exactly what buttons to push to make it happen, you get hyped up on glee and data vizardry… and then the existing organizational culture stops you from…
Stephanie’s Note: Dr. Sena Sanjines just wrapped up her dissertation, part of which measured whether my Data Visualization Checklist is worth its salt. Here are her findings. My name is Sena Sanjines and I’m an evaluator in Hawai‘i slightly obsessed with figuring out what makes people use, or not use,…
Journey maps are some of the most bad-ass visuals I know about. With origins in customer experience and human-centered design, a journey map shows how a client moves through your organization. Seeing the actual journey a customer takes can be eye-opening for people on staff who only work on one…
If you aren’t worried about being 508 compliant, you should be. A part of the Americans with Disabilities act, being 508 compliant means that the stuff you post on your website should be accessible to anyone with a disability. Back when this was first announced, in 1998, it only applied…
Even skilled graphic designers are frustrated by the never-perfect task of arranging logos on a slide. So don’t feel bad. It’s a pain, no question. You probably have to arrange logos on slides or a website to thank sponsors, acknowledge partners, or brag about your client roster. In this example,…
The histomap is one of the oldest, and most famous, ways to present qualitative data over time. The first example was created by John B. Sparks in 1931, titled “The Histomap: Four Thousand Years of World History.” At the time it was printed, the chart was marketed as a clear,…
Though I have a PhD, I left academia to become a consultant and it was the best decision I ever made. But I’m still a research nerd at heart so when I had a chance to run a study that examined the link between graphic design and report use, I…
I still have a landline. I’m not an old, but I conduct a lot of webinars about data visualization and reporting and the sound quality is so much better on a landline. But it is a midterm election year which means my phone has been ringing several times every day…
