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 not in anyone’s top ten. But we still wanted to…
Every time I show this trick to even veteran Excel ninjas, their heads explode. So you have probably heard me preach the gospel of small multiples once or twice before. Breaking a clutter-y graph into a lot of smaller graphs that show one piece of data at…
I have learned all of these lessons the hard way. I now have two checklists I run through before I have a workshop. One handles logistics and it’ll only be useful if you also run workshops. The other helps me determine whether a potential client and I are a good…
Did you see Vice? There’s a scene (this is no spoiler) in which a young Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia share a sickening laugh as they agree to an interpretation of the Constitution that allowed a massive power grab for a president. It’s gross. It’s cringe-y. The most disturbing…
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…
