How Drawing Makes Us Better at Data Visualization

“Which software program is best for data visualization???” This is one of the most common questions about getting started with graphs, charts, and diagrams. There are plenty of great software programs, like Excel and Tableau—and even PowerPoint! There’s also a lesser-known secret to creating strong data visualizations: hand-drawn sketches.
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The Data Strategy Show with Samir Sharma

How can we design the best possible dashboards for business leaders? I addressed this question on the Data Strategy Show with Samir Sharma. We talked about challenges companies face when trying to visualize data, what we should be thinking about when creating or re-designing dashboards and how to learn more about data visualization as a whole.
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Getting Started with Sketchnoting: A Conversation with Emily Mills

I recently had the chance to talk with Emily Mills, who is a professional illustrator and expert in sketchnoting. Emily was a guest speaker in our Report Redesign course. She walked us through the basics of sketchnoting, her career, why hand drawn images stop the scroll, the cool brain science behind sketchnoting, and then led us through some drawing exercises.
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Getting Started with Google Sheets: Conversation with Ben L. Collins

I recently had the chance to talk with my longtime friend, Ben L. Collins, who is THE Google Sheets instructor. Ben joined as a special guest at Office Hours (special live sessions for full course students where we share ideas and give feedback on each other’s projects). Ben shared about his consulting and training work with Sheets, and his personal take on Sheets – favorite features, surprising features, and so on. The personal insights and reflections you can’t learn just by googling something.
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Women in Data

In September, I was invited to speak at a Women in Data panel alongside Rebeca Pop. Women in Data is an international non-profit organization started in 2015 whose mission is to bring women together for career advancement and an opportunity to uplift one another. We talked about our start in data visualization, how to approach data viz problems, data integrity and ethics, how get started (and stand out) in the data viz world and what we see coming in the future for the data viz world.
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Designing Visual Appendices for Your Next Report—In Under an Hour

A couple years ago, I worked on a report that summarized survey responses from both universities and their students. Even with hundreds of survey responses and dozens of survey questions, we kept the report’s body to just six pages! How’d we choose which findings to include in the report’s main body?! That can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s much easier to pare down our report’s content when we’ve got appendices to back us up. I’ll walk you through what can – and should- be put into appendices and introduce you to the better version… visual appendices.
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